Just Breathe
by thesocketpuppet
Summary: A story in which Lapis Lazuli is 'redeemed' but still really angry and hurt and confused (she ain't no Crystal Gem!) Pearl's not really the best person to calm her down, but maybe the two of them can work something out - or fight something out, Gem-style. Pearlzuli, LaPearl, Pearlapis. Two-shot.
1. One

Credit to lapislazuhli for the idea that Lapis remembers Pearl from all the times Pearl has asked her to bring up images of Homeworld and/or Homeworld-controlled planets. And deep thanks to oathkeeper-of-tarth for the beta.

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* * *

 _"We found this gem-powered mirror at the Galaxy Warp. It can capture and display any event it's witnessed in all of Gem history."_

 _"…It is in pretty rough shape. It must finally be broken. What a shame."_

 _"Steven, it's just a mirror, a tool. It can't want anything."_

* * *

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 _/* */_

 _trapped by extenuating circumstances_

 _/**/_

Time drenches everything in a haze. Everything was grander.

Gems were so much more powerful.

Gems were always right.

Homeworld was the universe, or at least, had everything worth having in the universe.

Lapis wishes someone could understand.

Lapis also wishes she could just turn off her mind, just sink into the waters without a war within her or a cage around her.

She feels no relief that she has been freed, that she's been offered companionship, that on some evenings Steven sits with her on a deckchair by the beach.

Sometimes she finds herself back in the past, a mirror, bound to the wishes of whoever is holding her.

Sometimes she's still there, at the bottom of the ocean, chained with her own power, locked up in her own jail cell.

She hates this form, sometimes. Wishes that she could claw out the illusion of skin. Wishes she could tear herself apart. She's never believed in this miserable hunk of rock. Now she is bound to it by the loss of Homeworld. Even when she screams, it is not enough. Even when her throat hurts, it isn't enough.

There are days when she hides herself from the Crystal Gems and Steven. They don't run after her, probably on Steven's wishes. They give her space.

She hides herself because it's too easy to lash out at anything. She materializes water whips from the ocean and cuts rocks into halves, fourths, eighths – on and on until they're nothing but bits scattered on the sand. The sound of rock cracking surrounds her, and still it's not enough. The earth completes its rotation, but Lapis can go on for much longer when she's in the mood, days and days of wandering around, traveling beyond Beach City and to surrounding islands, destroying, destroying, destroying, wishing that she could lose herself.

/**/

It is Amethyst (of all the gems) that warms up to her.

"Hey," Amethyst greets, after Lapis has just finished a trip to some distant islands (she ground the boulders there into particles as fine as sand).

The sun has set.

"Where's Steven?"

"He's hangin' out with his lady friend."

"…What do you want?"

"Well, I used to be the queen of sulking around the beach sands until you showed up and stole the crown."

"What do you have to sulk about?" Lapis glares. "You… you weren't trapped in a mirror for five thousand years."

"No, I was just left on my own after Kindergarten was shut down. And then after I finally found someone that cared about me, she had to go and… leave too." Amethyst glares at Lapis. "You try being a gem when you don't know anything about being a gem. An' everyone's kinda rubbing it in your face, even when they don't mean to."

Such a point of view has never occurred to Lapis.

Amethyst shakes her head, tangles her fingers in her hair. "Ah, nevermind. What was I even thinking? Go have the sands to yourself."

"Hey – wait." Lapis says, as Amethyst stomps off. "No, I'm… we can share. We can be sulking royalty. The beach is pretty big. You can have one side. I can have the other."

"Nah, I might hit you or something. Used to be, if I was feeling pretty awful I'd take it out on a wrestling match, but eh, it's not fun without a challenge. So these days I'm stuck cracking the air with my whip. Kinda lame."

"Wrestling match?"

"Um. It's a human thing. They're all crazy in the head like we are, but since they gotta get along, some of 'em blow off steam by like, play fighting. Well sometimes it's real fighting. But wrestling's more about the hype and the drama and the crazy stunts. The audience gets in on it too."

"We have those," Lapis says wryly. "Except we don't do fake fights. We do real wars."

"Humans got that too," Amethyst says. "Not a pretty sight. Wrestling's, like, a form of entertainment."

"What, they just shove each other around? And cry if they break a bone?"

"Heh," Amethyst says, shapeshifting into a huger form, with longer hair and tights, "Time for a live demonstration!"

 _the baddest of them all_

Their first sparring match rearranges the shore line. It's the most fun Lapis has had in a while – getting to unleash her powers on an adversary that can (sort of) dodge. Amethyst is right: there's no fun without a challenge, and the rocks she used to pulverize didn't put up their dukes. It's heaps more interesting when the air's charged with two gems coming at each other, slashing tidal waves with energy blasts from dual whips, when the sands fly all over the place as Amethyst spin dashes. Heck, it's fun to scream pointless battle cries, hear the _snap_ of a whip breaking in half, only for Amethyst to recover with another one. Feet skidding on the ground, _graaahs_ of annoyance or pain, the twinkling sound each time Amethyst pulls out a whip – it's a big game, and when they both lie down on the sands, totally spent, they're both laughing their ass off.

"Annnd it's a tie! The longstanding feud between Purple Puma and the mysterious Water Witch must continue in the next installment! Tickets available next week!"

Lapis doesn't understand the words, but it sounds like _fun._

/**/

Things get better after that. Much better, in a way. She finds it easier to hang out with Amethyst and Steven. That way, she can still tell herself she's not a Crystal Gem. Because she's not.

But she likes breathing, when Amethyst shows her how it works. She likes eating sweets, too. Develops a habit for feeling the atmosphere, even if she doesn't have to. The days change. Cold and foggy in the morning, hot in the afternoon, and cool again in the evening. Sometimes her gem mixes them up, associates hot with spicy, smells the cold rather than feels it. She touches Steven's hand, notes how the skin wraps around bone, the flab that Amethyst explains changes as humans grow. Being barefoot, she can feel the texture of the wood when she walks on the pier, feel when she steps on the heads of nails hammered into the planks, feel the bits of sand that have made their way around town. The sounds of life reverberate in her mind. She gets why Amethyst indulges in these things: they make the hurt in her mind easier to bear. The sensory overload from human receptors is a welcome drunkenness from the sobriety of her past.

Around Garnet and Pearl she's still distant. To Garnet she's thankful for the space between them but also the short diplomatic steps the taller gem takes to include her – _will you be there for a picnic? We're having a ride with some humans –_ but Pearl is a different story. They still haven't talked.

"We need to give you a backstory," Steven says, sketching out a poster of Purple Puma and Water Witch. Garnet's out on a mission, Pearl's making dinner, and the three gems are on the sofa. The television's on, but the volume is muted. Lapis loves television, the making of imaginary stories. She's gotten quite good at understanding all of Steven's television-borne quirks.

"We can go with the 'misunderstood' angle," Steven suggests, and Lapis snaps her attention back to the task at hand..

"No way, that's been done to death! I wanna fight against a hardened criminal locked away for years in jail – but it turns out she was innocent all along! But the years in jail have totally changed her into a vengeful…" Amethyst pauses when she looks up at Lapis.

"Okay, maybe not."

Voice flat, Lapis says, "I'll go with being a vengeful water spirit. But I'd rather destroy everything for no rhyme or reason. The twist is," – and here Lapis smiles faintly – "that I win."

"Awww you guys," Steven says, "Can't this have a happy ending? Maybe Water Witch realizes that all her vengeance is really tiring and decides to fight _with_ Purple Puma to right all the wrongs in the world instead."

"No," both Lapis and Amethyst agree.

"Purple Puma's never gonna be a good guy."

"But if it's two bad guys fighting, who will the audience root for?"

"The baddest one, of course!" And again Amethyst and Lapis are in agreement.

"Ahem," Pearl says, clearing her throat. "Who's eating dinner?"

All three of them raise their hands. "Okay," Pearl murmurs. And that, Lapis realizes, is the first time in weeks that Pearl's bothered to even look in her general direction.

Lapis tells herself she's fine with three out of the four of them actually treating her like a person. If all of them did, she worried that she would be that much closer to being a Crystal Gem.

 _Never,_ she thinks to herself.

/**/

Months pass by. The gems go out on missions. Lapis doesn't come with them. She spends her days in town, introduces herself as a friend of the ladies down by the beach. Depending on who she is talking to, she's either a circus act or a witch. They're words for things people can't really understand, but no one seems to mind. And Lapis knows why. Nobody minds because of Steven. He's the link. _Here's a human,_ the humans think. This human trusts these magical ladies. The humans think he's one of them. And the Crystal Gems consider him one of them, too.

Steven is a tactical advantage for the gems, and surely Rose Quartz knew this. How classically Rose Quartz. Love and tactical advantages just _happen_ to conveniently align.

She never believed in this place, she tells herself.

 _But you believe in Steven_ , her mind taunts her back. She should be angrier about this. It feels like she's splitting apart, Lapis Lazuli of Homeworld warring against the Water Witch from Earth. She's neither, she knows it, not human, and maybe not even a gem.

She parts the seas with a flick of a finger. Combines them again with a wave. Crashing, thunderous, formless water: that's her. And the anger crawls all over her, mixing with tiredness and the weight of six thousand years.

Evening falls and she lies still on the sand. Her fingers twitch now and then. She rolls now and then. Sits on a boulder that she tries not to destroy, now and then. The stars twinkle. She doesn't notice the brief eruption of light from the house, meaning that the gems are back. Perched on a rock twice her height, she watches the waves, her view turned away from civilization.

Ten minutes later, she hears the careful crunch of footsteps.

"What is it," she growls, to whoever is there. It's either Steven or Amethyst, and they're used to it. Heck, Amethyst is used to being greeted with a cannonball of water.

"We were wondering where you were," Pearl says. Lapis struggles not to greet _her_ with a blast. That bossy voice, always asking to be shown this planet or that, to walk the artificial gardens of Kepler at Cygnus in her dreams.

"Too bad I'm not on a leash, huh. Don't worry, I haven't deluged that poor human town just yet," Lapis replies.

"You like the people there," Pearl says tartly. "You wouldn't."

Lapis grits her illusory teeth. "Yeah," she says, the admission good and bad at the same time. It's the culmination of all that she's thought today. "Yeah, I like them. I won't blow them up. Good little Water Witch. Where's Amethyst?"

"Tired and sleeping," Pearl replies. She doesn't go away. Lapis waits for a minute, not looking at Pearl. Under the light of the full moon, the sea is pretty to watch, a sight she hasn't yet grown tired of. "I came to apologize."

Lapis snorted. "Because your leader told you to?"

"Garnet hasn't asked me anything," Pearl says irritably.

"Rose Quartz. Steven."

There's a slight pause. Lapis turns to raise her eyebrows triumphantly. Pearl is blushing, out of shame. She's easy to read, at least for Lapis. Amethyst had called her _Bird Nerd._ True to form, Pearl is squawking and flapping her hands.

"I still hate you guys."

"I know."

"Steven and Amethyst are the exception," Lapis says, but is suddenly annoyed at her need to be specific.

"They're blameless," Pearl agrees. She looks so guilty. It makes Lapis a little amused. Maybe some of Jasper's rage has stayed within her. She's wondered that often, if fusions cause this kind of mixing that stays with you even after the dance is done. Or maybe Lapis has just been dealt a really bad set of cards, and wants someone to know just how bad it feels. She wouldn't wish this feeling on Steven, or Amethyst. But Pearl is right in front of her, and might actually give her a better fight than Purple Puma. She _was_ in the war, after all. She knows desperation.

"You want my forgiveness?" Lapis says, suddenly amused at having _something_ to dangle in front of someone. Pearl doesn't answer right away. Pearl might be doing this whole forgiveness thing to assuage her guilt, or because Steven wants her to. There's no such thing as really being apologetic. Lapis is fine with that.

"Fight me," she says with a grin. "People do this all the time, right? They fight and then they become friends after. It's in all the cartoons. But don't expect me to treat you like I do Amethyst." She summons a large tidal wave and crashes it down onto the beach. Pearl jumps to avoid the blast. Lapis grins. She's never done this against Purple Puma. This isn't Water Witch Pearl is up against. This is Lapis Lazuli.

Pearl hasn't summoned a weapon yet, probably trying to assess what her commander would do. But she's a soldier, Lapis knows. Hands crawl up from the sea, trying to smash Pearl like an insect. She retreats further inland, but Lapis's hands follow after her, shapeshifting into tendrils and vines that recombine when she _finally_ draws her spear and cuts them.

Lapis has seen plenty of Pearls die. She doesn't even have to look, for the water fists and tendrils are an extension of her perception. And right now, she feels a water fist squeeze Pearl. She turns to look, just as a spear is flung in her direction. it buries itself into a wall of water with a plop. _Not bad_ , Lapis thinks, as the distraction is enough for Pearl to squeeze out of the waterhand. She perfectly timed the spear in Lapis's direction as the fist was closing in, taking advantage of Lapis's carelessness. Too bad Lapis has ridiculous reflexes.

She reduces the number of hands. She could end the fight by watercloning, but that would be too easy. She wants a little challenge. Like cats play with food.

"You'd better pay attention," Pearl says, forming two spears into one.

"Don't bore me then," Lapis snaps back.

Pearl retaliates with holograms, which project simultaneously from her gem. She dodges as she forms the holograms. Whatever holograms remain after being flattened by waterhands pick up spare spears Pearl's left from her gem.

Finally, something a little more creative. But not much better. Lapis extinguishes each blue hologram while keeping tabs on Pearl, who almost lands one energy blast in her general direction, before a water vine pummels into the pale gem, knocking her inland. She rolls on the sand and Lapis feels only slightly better when she squeezes Pearl hard with a waterhand. She should be feeling better about seeing Pearl's form about to snap from the crushing tension.

"Woah you guys!" It's Amethyst, running out of the house. Short legs. Lapis could tie her up too. _What the hell is she thinking?_ She shakes her head to clear herself of the deluge of violence in her mind.

Lapis takes a good look at the mess she's made: puddles of water everywhere, rocks destroyed, what few straggling plants remained have been uprooted.

Amethyst stops between the two of them. "Everything… okay?"

"Water Witch just beat Bird Nerd," Lapis says with a calculated shrug. She releases Pearl from the hand. When Amethyst goes to help, she feels just a little bit bad, but Pearl waves any support away, stands up on her own, and reassures Amethyst that it was all in good fun.

"This is weird," Amethyst says. She runs a hand through her hair, like she always does when she has no idea what to do. "I'm not the one that breaks up fights here," she says, irritated at her own inability to sort this out.

"A-Amethyst! I'm absolutely fine," Pearl says, vibrating with some nervous tension, the sand in her hair and her clothes slightly torn.

"Yeah, Pearl's into wrestling now." Lapis says, taking Pearl's implicit permission to lie.

"I am not," Pearl huffs.

"Y'know what," Amethyst says, "I'm going to pretend I never saw this, and I'm going out to eat at a twenty-four hour convenience store."

"I'm coming," Lapis agrees.

"And Pearl will come just to make sure we don't blow anything up," Amethyst says, pushing Pearl ahead towards the town.

It's like flicking a switch in her head, Lapis realizes. Anger now, calmness later. Hatred now… and she doesn't want to know what comes after that.

/**/

/**/

 _sulking rock_

 _/**/_

The Crystal Gems all have secret places. Lapis finds out about them as the months roll by. Amethyst has her human parties and her beach, Garnet disappears into the bowels of the temple, and Pearl has the most obvious exit – she uses the warp pad in the evenings to go somewhere. All of this goes over Steven's head, but not Lapis.

She doesn't know what it is that compels her to follow after Pearl one evening. When the light dissipates, she finds herself in a strawberry field littered with weapons. She walks around until she gets to a series of small chunks of rock floating in air, leading to a larger floating island.

Pearl's there at the top with a picnic mat, lying down with her head resting on her palms.

"Hey, " Lapis says, with no particular plan.

Pearl predictably jumps three feet into the air and puffs like a (thin) chicken. "Ah-ah-ah… Lapis?"

"The one and only Water Witch," Lapis says. "Yeah, I followed you here. Deal with it."

"You're hanging out too much with Amethyst." But Pearl moves aside anyway to make space for Lapis to sit.

"I'm hanging out with the Cool Kids, actually." Lapis shakes her plastic bangles. "They've been teaching me fashion and stuff." And also kissing and parties, but Pearl wouldn't approve of that.

Pearl's eyes flicker from the cheap plastic bangles to Lapis's face. Lapis catches the look; she's trying not to say anything. Neither does Lapis press the issue. She doesn't know whether she should apologize for her callousness the other night.

"So this is your sulking place," Lapis says.

"Sulking place? I don't sulk."

"You nest, then? Or maybe you're the type to bury your head in the sand?"

"I should take away the television," Pearl mutters.

"Too bad you can't ground me, huh?"

Somehow their light talk eases the atmosphere.

"Sorry if I roughed you up a bit," Lapis says. It's easier than she expected to say. She feels a knot of hatred loosen, just a bit.

Pearl looks much better in her not-worn-out state. Pretty, even, with the starlight shining down on her.

"There's nothing to apologize for," Pearl says, slipping into what Lapis recognizes as a habitual formality.

"I still kinda hate you guys," Lapis says, without any real heat to her words. She should be angry at herself for her lack of hate lately. It comes and goes, sputters and roars. Like a switch. Sitting next to Pearl, she'd better not forget that the switch flicks on and off at the worst times.

Predictably Pearl just nods.

"What do you go here for anyway?"

Pearl returns to lying down. Looks up at the stars. Lapis follows. And far above her, the faint twinkling of Homeworld is there, though its song is distant. This twinkle is the light that's traveled years to reach Earth. She loves that she can see it from here. She hates that she can see it from here. It reminds her that _before_ will never be again. She sits up to tear her eyes away from that hypnotizing, unreal twinkle. The past is gone. Was it ever really there?

"It's like looking into the past, I suppose," Pearl murmurs. Lapis is amused. That's a poetic thing to think. How Pearl. She hears Amethyst in her head. _Dork. Nerd._ Humans have the best words for these things.

"It's strange that you miss Homeworld," Lapis says, then is startled by her own words. "I mean… I don't mean to pry."

"I find it odder that you're… indulging in human things with Amethyst."

Lapis smiles. It's a bitter twist of her lips. "I never believed in Earth. And yet it was an Earthling that was kinder than my kind. And I don't mean you Crystal Gems. You're the enemy. Or were the enemy. I wasn't expecting anything from you. It just hurts like a bitch to know that Homeworld isn't there, either."

The sudden warmth of a hug floods Lapis, having spent months with human receptors. But Pearl draws away quickly, nervously, and Lapis turns.

"I'm sorry," Pearl murmurs, and to punctuate the point she moves a small distance between the two of them.

Lapis ignores what Pearl considers a gaffe. "You know, it wasn't even that Homeworld was different. It was that _I_ was different," Lapis says.

"I can't go back either."

"Huh. It's strange that you think that way. You defected because of Rose Quartz. You gave all of that up to protect this world. And yet you won't even let Earth be your home. Even I know that I have to make the best of what's left of things."

"You're lucky that you can accept things so easily."

"It's not easy!" Lapis screams. "Do you think I _like_ being trapped with no options but Earth? If it weren't for your friends I would have destroyed this place. And it wouldn't be enough."

"Would it be enough to know you're not alone, at least?" Pearl says, looking at the stars.

"Would it be enough to know that someone is pining for the past along with me?" Lapis wants to lash out savagely. She knows the love Pearl has for her commander – who didn't even tell her everything. But even then Pearl had a choice. She chose to betray Homeworld. Her refusal to make Earth her home was her fault. "You had a choice. I didn't. So no, I _am_ alone. Your pain is your fault."

And Pearl should really be getting angry at her by now. She doesn't say anything though.

If the word for Pearl is _nerd_ , then the word for Lapis must be _jerk_. Human books are split on experiences like hers: sometimes humans that draw bad cards learn compassion. Other times, it just makes them want to burn the world the way the world burned them. She knows which one she is. Pearl is the other sort, even if Pearl doesn't recognize empathy in herself. She's dense like that.

"I'm leaving," she announces, annoyed at herself.

"Us?" Pearl says, suddenly panicked. _Steven would be displeased with Pearl if she were the reason his beach summer fun buddy left,_ Lapis thinks, irritated.

"I'm just leaving this sulking rock of yours. See you around."

Lapis Lazuli flees from the mess she's made.

/**/

"I don't know how you do it," she tells Steven one day, as they are out eating ice cream.

"Do what?"

"Put up with Pearl," Lapis mutters.

"He's a saint, right?" Amethyst agrees.

"I know you asked her to talk to me," Lapis says back.

Steven looks at her. "I didn't, though," he says. "I think Pearl feels the sorriest about things." He stops talking to focus on licking the ice cream before it melts onto his fingers.

"Well, Pearl did stuff her in her gem. That sucks big time," Amethyst says.

"Yeah, and you just tried to kill me when I got out," Lapis says cheerfully.

"That sucks big time too," Amethyst agrees.

They focus on their ice cream for a while. It's a beautiful day at the boardwalk, and there they are, the picture of friendship.

"I've been mean to her," Lapis says, as she finally reaches the cone part of her ice cream.

"Don't beat yourself up over it," Amethyst says at the same time Steven frowns.

"What's wrong, Lapis?"

A lot of answers pop into her head. _I'm fraternizing with the enemy. I'm friends with my captors. I'm betraying myself because of you. Or because I'm holding onto whatever is left of where I came from._

"I dunno," she says.

"Hm. Maybe you could do something with her," Steven suggests.

Amethyst snorts into her ice cream. It doesn't deter her from snarfing down the whole thing. "Clean the house? Shop for groceries? Have a freak-out session?" Amethyst wipes her fingers on her shirt.

The two gems have a chuckle over that. "Exactly!" Steven says, missing the point. "She could use some help. And she bought a used car and she's figuring out how to fix it. You could help with that."

"We don't do those things," Lapis says. "That's a Pearl thing."

"You could always learn," Steven says. Not for the first time, Lapis is struck by how little Steven knows about gem culture. Amethyst too, for neither of them seem to really get it. She doesn't do those things. Those things are a Pearl's job.

Against Steven's hopeful smile though, she can only say, "I guess?"

/**/

/**/

 _the real housewives of beach city_

 _/**/_

She asks Pearl the next day if she can help with the car. Pearl's face rearranges itself from shock to wariness. She can't tell Pearl it's because it was Steven's idea. Not after she was wrong about Pearl's intentions.

 _Maybe she's not_ that _easy to read._

"It's alright," Pearl says in that prissy voice. "I've got it under control."

"Just shut up and let me help," Lapis says irritably.

Pearl smirks. "Is that how you say sorry?"

"It is," Lapis says gruffly. Today is a better day. Her internal battles aren't at the forefront of her mind. Instead she allows herself to be surprised at how quickly Pearl too can switch roles. Then again, in television, the neurotic mom occasionally had more depth than most people expected. She can roll with it, Lapis tells herself.

Pearl's been looking through the assortment of tools. "Let's start by lifting the car," she says, with some kind of tool. "Car jack," she explains.

"I could just… lift it up with my waterhands," Lapis mutters.

"You could," Pearl says, poking around the toolbox.

"…I'll just do it your way."

She's never really had to learn about tools. Having to rely on them – learning them, maintaining them – seems awfully limiting. She has her wings, her hands, her clones. She can fly. Or more precisely, she had them until her gem cracked.

The afternoon goes like this: Pearl tells her what the tools are, and she hands them to Pearl, kind of like in the medical TV shows, except the car is the patient. Pearl lies down on some kind of rolling board, does whatever, then she goes to the front of the car – called a hood – and does whatever. Lapis follows, not really listening to Pearl's lecture about the salesman lying about this or that.

They break for a bit sometime in the afternoon. They sit down on deck chairs. Pearl has a cooler for drinks – of course she does – and Lapis appreciates the unhealthy fizzle of soda going down her form's throat.

It's around that time that Lapis realizes that Pearl doesn't breathe, ever.

"Does your gem feel anything?"

Pearl stops sorting the tools on her plastic folding table. "Beg your pardon?"

"Do you let yourself feel anything?"

"Of course? When Steven was younger we had to be conscious of what might hurt him, what was too cold or hot. And of course when we're in battle…" Pearl drifts off. She's not talking to a human. She's not talking to a gem born on Earth. And she's not talking to Garnet.

"What do you mean?" she asks instead.

"You should try it," Lapis says, putting an aluminum ice-cold drink to her forehead. Pearl follows suit.

"It's cold," Pearl says. "And wet."

"I can't believe you." Lapis would be amused, or horrified. She gets it. She gets why Pearl is so dead set on being a gem. On not being human.

"We're not humans," Pearl says, starting to get a vague idea of just what it is Lapis is trying to say.

"I'm going to guess that Amethyst has tried to get you to do this and you've fought over it."

"… She has."

"It's pointless to hold onto being a gem," Lapis says. "I'm not a Homeworld gem and I'm not a human."

"And it makes you angry and violent to have lost all that," Pearl murmurs, returning the drink to the cooler.

"So you hold onto this whole gem shit because you don't want to go on a crazed rampage? You don't care for most of humanity. You think Earth is a backwater planet. You still dream of space."

"I did. Almost killed Steven trying to get to the nearest star system." Pearl's glares at her, telling her to drop the damn subject.

Lapis chuckles darkly. Steven might have an idea that his caretakers are dangerous. He doesn't really get it yet.

Every time she talks to Pearl it always feels like they're on the precipice of undoing each other's efforts to get by.

"That kid's going to hate you when he hits puberty," Lapis says. Pearl rolls her eyes. But she doesn't say anything. The Bird Nerd knows herself, even when she wishes she didn't.

"You think you'd deserve it, huh."

Pearl still doesn't reply

"Pretty sweet revenge for all those times I had to visualize Homeworld for you." She should shut up, she realizes. But she can't stop herself. "Mirror!" she says, mimicking Pearl's voice, bossy and high-pitched, "The Sanctuary at Cluster Seven!"

"Stop it," Pearl growls through clenched teeth. There we go, Lapis thinks. The cracks start to appear.

It makes Lapis want to keep going and play her part to the hilt. Then they'd fight. Then the car would be wrecked. And so on, and so on, and so on. The thought of it is tiring.

"Yeah, let's just get this thing washed."

/**/

Lately Lapis has been following one of those teen shows every evening with Amethyst and Steven. One of the characters keeps a diary. It seems to be a kind of log for Lapis, but much more personal. It's not for work, isn't for submission or tracking purposes. There are physical diaries, then journals, then blogs. The physical diary is a blank notebook with an intricate plastic lock.

 _Dear diary,_ she thinks to herself. _Yesterday I helped repair a car._

 _Dear diary,_ she thinks to herself, _I don't know what I'm doing._

 _I'm screwed in the head and so is she._

Pearl doesn't really care for this hunk of rock. Pearl doesn't like Homeworld that much either. But she still asks for pictures of the past all the time anyway. Probably wishes for a time when she didn't have to fight against her own home planet. Probably still wonders if all the death and destruction during the war was for anything. Does Pearl believe in this planet? She believes in Steven. But she doesn't have Rose Quartz's all-encompassing love and faith for this world.

She did it all for Rose and at the end of the day she has to hold on for a child.

 _How miserable,_ Lapis thinks. She hates watching Pearl for that reason. Because she – Lapis Lazuli – can destroy if she wanted to. But Pearl can't let herself lose it. There she is, hanging onto a sliver of sanity. One slip – one bad day – who knows if Pearl would still be a Crystal Gem? What fragile bonds keep them together, if it weren't for Steven.

Or maybe Lapis is wrong and Pearl's teammates will pull her back from the brink. Who knows. They're both trapped – and really, even after telling Pearl it was her own fault, the truth is, Lapis isn't sure what to make of their common chains.

/**/

/**/

 _tbc_

 _/**/_

* * *

 _"There's a lot you don't know about Gems, Steven."_

 _"How could I have known the Gem contained in that mirror would be so powerful?"_

* * *

A/N:

Gems don't see each other as 'people,' guys. They probably don't really consider each other 'their fellow kind.' Peridot didn't even know the Crystal Gems in Marble Madness. She freaked out because she saw a _gem_.

Part 2 has a little more about how Lapis perceives her situation, some small worldbuilding stuff (a bit about being trapped in the mirror, etc.), and the usual Pearl/Lapis bickering. And, I don't know, maybe they finally learn how to get along.


	2. Two

**She Never Asked For This**

They get to the fountain in time. Lapis dumps Amethyst's form into the waters, her own body fizzing at the edges in worry.

But there's nothing to worry about, because the fountain does its job. Amethyst jumps out of the water and surprises her with a tackle.

"Toldya it'd be okay," she says, helping Lapis up from the fall she herself incurred.

"I've only _heard_ of Rose's Fountain," Lapis replies, trying to hide her relief.

"You should have seen your face! _Garnet's gonna kill me, I'm never going to see Steven again_ -"

"That's not what I was thinking."

"Kinda something like that, right?"

"No. I was –" Lapis sighs. Keeping this bravado up is… too much. Too insincere. "I'm sorry," she says, folding her legs and sitting on the ground. "I didn't mean to crack your gem. I wasn't thinking of Steven or Garnet or whatever. I… don't want anything to happen to you. Anything bad."

Amethyst blinks down at her. For a second, it's all up in the air if Amethyst will just laugh it off and they'll never bring it up again. But then she sits down, and the knots in Lapis loosen just a little, somewhere inside her.

"Eh," Amethyst says quietly, as they lean on the fountain's wall. "It wasn't your fault, y'know. Wrestling just gets like that."

"I was angry," Lapis says. "Not at you. I just - I don't know. I - I wasn't supposed to hit you with that water whip."

"Hey, relax. It's okay. I'm healed." Amethyst shapeshifts into a bodybuilder and flexes a bicep. "Everything's working."

 _And what about next time?_

/

Whatever Amethyst says doesn't change that Lapis is strong. She never asked for this. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that she isn't strong. It's that the Crystal Gems are actually weak, not made for war. They were not made to be top-of-the-line soldiers (except Amethyst, but she was overcooked).

One day, not long after accidentally hurting Amethyst, she walks into the ocean. Lower and darker, she goes. The pressure might destroy a lesser gem, but not her. Maybe this is where she belongs. Beat down by the current, swallowed whole by the black, she might not hurt anyone here, not by her hands that have mutated beyond what she recognizes.

She never wanted to be this angry. So angry that not even the love of a human or the support of a few gems could fix her. So angry that she'd hurt them instead. So angry that it was what she ran on. And without the anger there wouldn't be anything left of her.

* * *

 **Sulking Place Again**

When she rises to the surface after a day or maybe a week, she's back at the distant island. The same island that's run out of rocks for her to destroy. She sits on the shoreline, listens to the waves. There's a storm in the distance, thunder and lightning. From here it looks so small. Like looking at Earth from Homeworld.

Days pass. She resists the temptation to return to Beach City. She wants to watch TV. She doesn't know what day it is, if Under the Knife's season finale has come and gone. Steven is no doubt wondering where she is, why she isn't at their shoreline or the cove she used to sleep at. She just up and disappeared, like a cat that went up into a tree that you never saw come down.

When it rains - as it so often does these days - she helps the storm a little. Not enough to capsize boats or anything, but enough to feel the tendrils of water just so, at the tipping point. She could upturn boats and kill people, with a tiny flick of a finger.

She doesn't. She won't. She tells herself she doesn't even know why she takes a perverse sort of joy in playing a game of tightrope with the water and all the living creatures that depend on the ocean to survive.

At the end of one rainy afternoon, the kind that kids on television spend in bed with their love interests, Pearl appears in Peridot's pod, surfing through the water, ruining the rhythm of the waves.

 _You could crush her_ , her mind says. She hears it in Malachite's voice, and sits hugging her legs to her chest, hoping that whatever Pearl is here for, they won't end up fighting.

But it isn't Pearl that comes out. It's Steven and Amethyst. (Since when did they learn to operate gem equipment?)

"Hey," Amethyst greets, while Steven hugs her.

"You shouldn't be here," Lapis mutters.

"Yeah, I know. Which is why we're here!"

"Lapis," Steven says, as he draws away from her, searching her face. "What's wrong?"

 _What's wrong is that I'm getting angry that you care so much!_ Lapis hugs herself tighter to restrain herself.

"I just… needed some time away."

"Will you come back?"

"I don't know," she answers honestly.

Steven looks like he's about to press further, but it's Amethyst who holds him back with a firm grip on his shoulders.

"Okay. We just wanted to check on you." Amethyst looks torn, as though wanting to speak more. "Can we get you something from the Big Donut?"

"A dozen glazed," Lapis says, surprised at herself. At Amethyst's expectant expression, she adds: "A fizzy drink. Any of them. And chips."

"That's it? You're parking your butt out here for weeks and that's all you're asking for? You're a growing gem!"

"I can't really think of anything at the moment," Lapis says. A sudden wave of guilt hits her, that image of Amethyst coming apart in her arms. "Just… go already. Please."

She can't really stand Steven's worried look, or Amethyst's kindness, like an unwrapped gift specially made for her.

/

Pearl delivers the goods, late at night. It seems the trip takes Peridot's ship longer than Lapis expected.

"Steven's asleep," Pearl greets, something of an apology that it is her who is here and not Lapis's more favored gems. The placating tone sets her off, but Pearl's offerings aren't what she expected; curiosity outweighs her irritation.

"He insisted on getting you camping gear since you don't sleep in a cove," Pearl says. "I tried to tell him you don't sleep."

"I do, sometimes," Lapis says.

"Well the tent should be good for you, then."

There's a dome tent, several liters of assorted sodas, the dozen glazed she asked for, chips (one of each variety), and Pearl holds out a communicator, similar to what Steven has.

"It's… a portable television. Same cable operator as Steven's," she says. She takes out an antenna – what an outdated thing – and speaks again: "Took me longer than I thought to get it to work." At Lapis's raised eyebrow, Pearl looks away.

"Okay," Lapis says.

Pearl departs, having nothing more to do. And Lapis is fu rious with herself again, for not saying thank you, or maybe she's angry for wanting to say it at all.

* * *

 **Skittish**

 _It was a discordance bomb that put an end to Malachite. She was winning the battle, when the pearl retrieved something from within her gem and hurled it at her. Malachite picked it up easily, and would have crushed it for laughs – but it detonated. Lapis awoke hours later, in Steven's house, the sudden loss of extra limbs strange to her._

 _She didn't immediately remember herself. It took a moment. In the dark, she could hear the human sleeping, and right in front of her: the eerie gaze of the pearl. Lapis had jumped back into the sofa she was sitting in when she noticed Pearl, fingers twitchy as though unsure whether she should take her spear out or what._

 _"Pearl," Lapis said, remembering slowly. And then it was a flood of memories and feelings that washed over her, from which she had only one solution:_

 _Run._

 _She formed her wings. The boy woke up. "Pearl?"_

 _"Steven," Pearl said, her voice tense._

 _"Lapis!" He woke up all the way at the sight of her wings. "Lapis, don't go. Please. We can help you."_

 _She'd broken through the roof then._

/

She can't face Steven or Amethyst – or Garnet, even. But it's been weeks since she last saw anyone, and the television runs on solar cells, which can't produce enough electricity for her to keep it on the whole day.

Of all the gems to think about, it is Pearl, sitting on her pathetic floating island. It's the evening wind, and the vast, flat loneliness of the sea, that makes her think this.

Lapis's sea-wings form, wrapping around her. She walks on the water for some distance, the currents gentle in their caress.

She spreads her wings towards the nearest warp pad, a few islands away.

/

She lands in the strawberry battlefield. Somewhere up there is Homeworld, but it isn't what she's looking for.

She's just about to take off when the wailing frequencies of a discordance field hit her. The maddening wave of pain makes her fall to the ground, blocking out all sensation except the hurt, throbbing and bearing down upon her, like something's splitting her in half –

And then the pressure ends but the boneless, bodiless feeling stays, not unlike being trapped in a mirror.

She starts by closing her eyes and breathing. The pressure around her body, like a soldier bearing down on her, starts to ease up. Next she twitches her fingers and her toes. She feels her chest expand and contract. Dirt, her mind tells her, when her fingernails dig into the ground.

A sudden, lancing aftershock of pain rips through her temples, there and gone just as fast. Lapis tries to make a sound, but nothing comes out of her. Her gem is still reeling from the crushing vibration of the last frequency.

I'm Lapis, she tells herself. Always, when she feels herself coming apart, her name is what she comes back to.

I'm Lapis Lazuli, and you can't keep me here!

She'd very nearly come apart that time she became Malachite. The thought of it is dizzying – or at least, it feels that way to her. If she were a human, that is how she'd feel.

You're getting better. Just relax.

That's Garnet's voice, from when Malachite was split apart.

You're getting better, she thinks to herself now, another form of self-reassurance.

She tries to talk again.

"That… was bad," she murmurs to herself.

The feeling comes back to her arms and neck.

A discordance field?

Homeworld?

The residual pain, however sharp, yields to her fear.

Homeworld.

Homeworld!

She gets up, one knee and then the other. After a few wobbly steps, she's down on her knees.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Get up.

She focuses on the solidity of her form, on keeping herself together. This time, when she gets up, she hobbles successfully onward.

By the time she reaches the floating islands, she can form her wings and hop up the platforms.

Pearl's there, knocked out. Too close to the epicenter of the field. Just a small distance from her hand is a discordance bomb. And scattered around the platform are relics, their innards spilling out. The wailing stone, in particular, has been smashed.

What the hell?

"Pearl!" she shouts, because she sure as hell isn't going to pick her up and shake her nicely. She'd much rather rattle Pearl or slap her face.

Pearl wakes up with a groan. She sits up, wobbly, but Lapis keeps her distance rather than offering a hand.

"L-Lapis?"

"What the hell is going on here?"

"Where's the Destabilizer?"

"On your right."

Pearl pats the ground around her, her eyes probably stinging from the pain. Her slender fingers wrap around the bomb.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"What are you doing here?"

Lapis is suddenly ashamed of her anger. She came here to – what, really? Look for an easy target, or maybe try to say thank you for last time, or something.

"I was looking for you," Lapis says. "I don't know, okay."

It hits her that she does know.

She needs to talk to someone about her accident with Amethyst.

"I was working on upgrading the Discordance bomb into a Destabilizer," Pearl says, now more willing to offer information.

"That thing… is what forced me and Jasper to unfuse, right?"

"A discordance bomb would, yes. This thing… at its strongest setting, should be able to poof a gem. Not shatter it or crack it. Just… poof it."

"How kind of you."

"It's not really my style."

For a moment, Lapis thinks to ask: Aren't you in pain? Shouldn't you be like, resting or something? But then it occurs to Lapis that she would never bring her guard down for Pearl – and Pearl is likely to feel the same way.

"Breathing helps," Lapis says.

"Not for me."

A water tendril from Lapis's wings reaches out. She feels Pearl tense up; but the tendril goes for a rock and rolls it to Pearl. "Well, whatever," Lapis says, sitting down next to Pearl and leaning on hard surface. Pearl follows, which is what Pearls do, anyway.

A short while later:

"I was testing the timing feature," Pearl says. "I set the bomb to cover the farthest area – the wave is weaker as it spreads out. I was supposed to be farther out, so I wouldn't be affected by it that much. Well, now we know the timer isn't working."

"I was at the Warp Pad when the bomb detonated," Lapis mutters. "What if it was someone like Steven, huh?

"I'm sorry," Pearl says. "I should have checked."

"Damn right you should have. It… it felt like I was coming apart. That's the lowest setting?"

"Yes."

"You're not shitting around with this war stuff," Lapis says. "And you're bringing along all the kids for this twisted ride."

"I'm trying not to."

They're quiet again. Though Lapis doesn't want to admit it, they talk in bursts because they're both tired.

"I guess I should be thanking you for the bomb, though. Malachite was toxic."

"Garnet was angry," Pearl says, though she doesn't sound sorry about it at all. "I didn't exactly tell her I was building a D-bomb. But it worked. It's a… an 'ace in the hole', as the humans say. A last resort. Entirely untested."

"You're keeping all this a secret from them?"

Pearl looks at her. She can't read that look. Is it saying _please don't tell anyone I'm building an arsenal?_

"So many secrets," Lapis says. "You and Garnet both."

"We learned from our leader," Pearl says. What a despondent tone.

"This is why I like TV." It's not as complicated.

"I'm glad you found something you like about this… miserable planet."

Lapis laughs. "Oh! You're happy for me, huh." There's anger again, and sadness that she's angry. "We don't deserve it, though." Especially not you, Lapis thinks. But something stops here from saying it. Maybe it's the knowledge that even if she said it, it wouldn't change anything.

"You deserve it," Pearl says.

"Not really. I almost got Amethyst turned. Had to run to the Fountain. I was… careless. And angry. Angry over things that weren't her fault. If only Jasper were here," Lapis mutters. To say the name out loud brought such white-hot anger into her, the kind of relentless, boiling hatred that made her feel good in a moment and terrible for hours after. "I'd shatter her gem. And step on it."

"You could go on killing Jasper in your head," Pearl says, after a while. "And it still wouldn't be enough when she's dead and gone. And also, Steven wouldn't approve. He'd have her bubbled."

Lapis laughs.

"You know it," Lapis says. "Y'know, I think I know why I hate your face so much. I hate watching you grasp at all this science and all this magic, looking for a way out of your grief. You'd rather look into a house of mirrors than get out of it and wake the fuck up that your leader is dead and the world is crumbling and there's no way out of it. This planet has an expiration date, and there you are strategizing and thinking about bombs when it's obvious there's no way three gems could beat a fleet."

Lapis looks to the ground and the growing green grass. "And," she says, quieter this time, closing her eyes, "I hate that I might be there with you guys."

"Admitting it is the first step," Pearl says, so smug and patronizing that Lapis can see the smile on her face in her mind's eye. Right then, Lapis imagines Pearl as the stock authority figures that kids threw tomatoes at. Helicopter Mom, Uptight Deputy Principal… Pearl morphs into different roles, but at the end of the day, when Lapis opens her eyes, the gem sitting next to her is neither a teacher nor a mother nor anything else. More than the sum of all of those, Pearl's just Pearl.

"Shut up," Lapis mutters, but there's no real heat there. Or perhaps there is some warmth, across Lapis's cheeks.

It's almost like hanging out with Amethyst, this sort of ribbing.

/

"Time to go home?" Pearl asks, after the sun rises.

"Eh. Whatever." But Lapis gets up and follows Pearl to the warp pad, after watching her clean up all the equipment. She stuffs the bomb into her pearl. _How useful,_ Lapis thinks of her gem. Well, that's what Pearls were meant to be.

* * *

 **Party Time**

Steven clangs the pots and pans together when Lapis shows up with Pearl. Pearl gives her a tiny smile – both a request not to tell anyone about the stronger D-bomb, and maybe actual gladness that Lapis has come around, likely for Steven's sake – and then she disappears into her room. Amethyst isn't there at the house like she usually is. "Is she at her room?" Lapis asks Garnet.

Garnet's reply is that half-smile that Lapis occasionally wishes she could punch. "She isn't," Garnet says. "But you'll find her."

With nowhere else to go, Lapis retreats to her cove. It's a much smaller place than the Crystal Gem's temple, at the farthest edge of the island; it's about half of Steven's room in size. Lapis started sleeping here (or retreating, anyway), because no way would she ever live with the Crystal Gems.

The waves sound slightly different back here, Lapis thinks to herself.

Amethyst is fake-sleeping at the mouth of the cave. Lapis knows this because Amethyst can't sleep, can't crawl back into her hole, no matter what. She went and walked out and got plucked into this mess, along with everyone else.

"Amethyst," Lapis says, as she folds her legs next to her, "Sorry."

"W-what for?" Amethyst gets up. There's sand on her tunic. That's what she concentrates on.

"I just needed to sort some things out in my head."

"S'not a problem if you wanted some alone time, y'know. Y'don't have to apologize." Amethyst scowls.

Lapis pokes her on the cheek. The gesture – she wasn't thinking – is as much a surprise to her as it is to Amethyst.

"I'm not going anywhere," Lapis says, and that too surprises her.

* * *

 **Kissing Game**

She's back to spending her days in front of the television and watching torrents of the episodes she's missed. It gives her something to talk about with Steven and Amethyst.

There is the occasional party, though she has yet to shapeshift a bloodstream to experience this thing humans call alcohol. Amethyst guarantees a blast, and Lapis is game for anything in the weeks after her self-imposed exile.

"It's a bit tricky," Amethyst says. "You have to keep that form while being, uh, y'know…" she struggles to find a word. "Impaired! There we go."

Lapis tries it, after googling what the circulatory system looks like. It's way more complicated than the stomach, and requires more thought as to the design. She shapeshifts an approximation. The idea is to absorb the poison and let her senses be affected by it.

"Hey Ame," she says. "Are there any rules about humans? You know… humans and gems?" She gestures with her hands, sliding her fingers together.

"Don't have a kid with 'em," Amethyst replies with a dark chuckle.

/**/

"Does your dad know that you're going out of town?"

"Pssh," Buck Dewey answers. "Naw."

"You're above the law and all that. A regular bad boy," Jenny says, suppressing a snort.

"Yep, and you're the evil twin," he ribs right back.

Lapis smiles as she listens. It's nice to have the wind blowing her hair all over as they drive to the neighboring town (a more happening place than Beach City).

"Hey," she says, remembering something. "Where's Sour Cream?"

"Already there, setting up the place. He cut class."

"Priorities," Amethyst says with a grin.

"Aren't you kind of his aunt?"

"Ugh, you're making me feel old, Lapis!"

Jenny and Buck laugh. "Oh wow, he's got a chaperone. Did his mom tell you to come make sure he doesn't get into trouble?"

Amethyst rolls her eyes. Lapis joins in: "She's not a regular mom," she says. "She's a cool mom."

It's nice to laugh along with the two humans.

* * *

/**/

/**/

end of chapter

/**/

Note: In the two episodes we've seen Amethyst 'sleep', it is shown in both that each instance is pretend sleeping. She was awake (or 'sleeping') when Pearl started to dream, and she was awake/pretend sleeping during that wailing stone thing. Somewhere online there is a video of Rebecca mentioning that she 'eats' and 'sleeps' cos they're fun. Anyway, this is just my interpretation of that behavior.


	3. Three

_**Author's Note:** Something really interesting about Just Breathe – I posted the first chapter last May 5, 2015. The original idea when I was developing Lapis's character was that Lapis was going to find human life really interesting, that she'd be drawn to television shows and the like. Weirdly enough by this latest Stevenbomb we have Peridot doing the exact same thing. I guess this is sort of looking like a 'what if Lapis came first on the redemption arc' which is … well, I wasn't expecting that. It's a weird sort of correlation. I wonder if in canon it will turn out that the homeworld gems are all attracted to TV shows and weather. Probably not, because it's already been done on Peridot, but just a weird thing to note._

 _Thank you to ravens-on-the-berg & oathkeeper-of-tarth from tumblr for the beta._

/

/

 ** _you have to try it out_**

Lapis never gets the hang of shifting a bloodstream and a stomach at once. When she drinks, the alcohol only tastes like soda with a little extra something she doesn't quite know. Purple Puma, on the other hand, is gleefully chugging down the stuff, beating the humans in some stupid drinking game.

 _So this is what an actual human party looks like_. Once Lapis gets useds to the newness of it all, all these new humans and a house not like Steven's and the smells and the sounds and the lights, she finds herself empty. She isn't impressed, watching the crowd from a chair at the corner of someone else's living room. She watches the way a director would, the way she imagines they do on set. She's been watching those behind-the-scenes stuff on television. She tries to put herself in that chair, with the loudspeaker, someone in control of everyone's movements, a puppetmaster, not a mirror, not a puppet. Maybe that's why she's so into how shows are made: because she lived a show all her life and now she wants to screw everyone up like a director can.

The scene unfolds before her: teenagers trying to dance; there's no chance of a fusion with how badly they sync. Teenagers trying to talk despite the speakers. Boys trying to impress girls. Girls trying to be impressed. The occasional gay couple that everyone has their eye on in case they can get a free show. Content-wise, even Lapis knows this is drivel. Maybe it's the lack of camera action, the controlled pacing showing off every scripted moment on the screen. Maybe it's the lack of good music (whatever Sour Cream is playing doesn't go with Lapis's tastes). Maybe it's the lack of filtering from the post-production. Real life doesn't add up to television. Maybe that's why everyone's watching TV instead of partying every night.

Purple Puma's totally into the whole thing though, as she – he, actually – plays beer pong with the boys over a billiard table. Amethyst talked about 'seeing things through a haze' when it came to drinking. Maybe that's the post-production filter. Lapis tries, again, to shapeshift a bloodstream. The fine detail of creating vessels till her fingertips leaves her exhausted. How Amethyst does it, she has no clue.

"Hey babe," someone says from above her. "You okay?"

It's a girl. A tall one, with a grin and a can of beer. Lapis hates her right away. The smile on the girl's face reminds her of Jasper, moments before their fusion.

"I'm good," she says.

"You aren't drinking," the girl replies, holding out the can.

"I can't shapeshift a bloodstream."

This doesn't weird the jock out. Instead, she laughs, her short ponytail jiggling along with her head.

"Are you with anyone?"

"I came in with the Puma."

"Ya looking to come out with someone else?" she says with a waggle of her eyebrows.

"No thanks, _sweetie,_ " Lapis says, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

The jock gets the idea though. "I'll come back later then," she says with a shrug. "Count on it, babe."

This is bad idea. This isn't her scene. She wants out. She'll hang by the pool and wait for Purple Puma to pass out and then fly them back home. She just hopes Puma doesn't try to grapple with the entire wrestling team…

/

/

Once next to the pool, Lapis hugs her knees to her chest, awash in feelings of alienation. _You're not a human, you're not a gem, you're just Lapis Lazuli, stranger in a strange land, without a home, without a past, without a future._ She can watch as many TV shows as she can, she can hang out with Amethyst as much as she wants, she can like Amethyst and Steven as much as she does – but she's still the only gem left in limbo, neither caught up in the present nor aware of the past.

 _You can't sulk like this forever,_ she knows. It hits her harder now, in the darkness, while it feels like the rest of the world is happily (ignorantly) partying inside, and there she is on the outside looking in.

 _You can't sulk like this forever._

 _/_

 _/_

At three in the morning, she finally gains the guts to go inside and tell Puma that she's grateful for the opportunity but wants out. It shouldn't be too hard; at this point a third of the room have gone upstairs, doing whatever humans always censor in their shows.

She steps back into the house, coming in from the backyard, only to be cornered by that dumb jock from earlier.

"There you are!" comes out more like _tharr' ya arrree_ , like a pirate. Lapis tries to move past her, but the human just cages her in with a hand on the wall.

"You're blue," the girl says, drunk out of her mind. Lapis winces at the smell of her breath.

"I'm not in the mood," Lapis says, ducking under the girl's arms and walking out of the kitchen, the whole time reminding herself that she's in a human zone, a bunch of people who might be dumb but are ultimately inconsequential –

but the stranger just has to push her luck and try to grab Lapis's forearm.

Nobody grabs Lapis. In a split second all the water from the pool comes barrelling in, destroying the wooden door, sending splinters flying, and along with them, the girl.

Out of all the screams, Lapis hones in on Purple Puma, her fashionably late appearance to the mess.

"What the hell, Water Witch?"

This is really all the Puma's fault, anyway. Lapis commands the water to pool together, sends another high-pressure blast along the Puma's way. It hits square in the abdomen, sending Puma back a few steps before he regains his balance with a crouching stance.

"W-what's going on here?" Jenny runs in between the two of them.

Puma shakes his head. "I – what the hell _are_ we doing?"

It comes out a garbled mess of words that suddenly flips the switch in Lapis's head. She swivels her head around: it looks like a cannonball's gone through the door, like a robber's broken in. There's shattered glass in the kitchen and the carpet's soaked and lamps upturned. Half the lights are broken somehow, leaving them cast in a faint yellow glow. And the unconscious human – is she still alive?

Of all the people to lash out at…

Lapis raises a hand, makes a wave like a conductor in front of the orchestra. Water – first tiny droplets, then blobs, then a whole mass – follows her will and returns to the swimming pool in a grand, sloshing mess.

Her mind on automatic, Lapis runs away, her feet stepping over the glass, the wood, her arm crashing into what's left of the back door. The evening wind whips her face, but every sensation passes through her as though she's a ghost. Her wings flutter alive and unfurl as she runs, and she takes off, trying to shut her mind down.

/

/

 ** _goofed (time out)_**

She stops flying only once she's made it to the strawberry battlefield, which takes her a day of flight. She knows where it is; she understands the use of stars in mapping. Navigation had taken her mind off the floodgates that now open as she falls to the ground in a tumble.

She can't stop thinking about the war.

She can't stop thinking about the past.

She can't stop taking it out on everyone.

There's a reason the Crystal Gems used to have a fence on the beach, and it wasn't to keep humans out. They were locking themselves in.

Maybe Amethyst wouldn't understand, but this wasn't her fault.

Had she killed a human?

Images of the battlefield flash through her mind. It's overwhelming, this march of her memories, a show in her own mind's cinema, something she's been trying to bury by watching new shows, human shows; she'd rather learn about humans than live with herself. All the gems she's seen shattered were real, once. All the enemies. All the allies.

If she were she human she'd dry heave. If she were she human she'd cry. If she were human she'd die fast, within a century, and she wouldn't have to think about it.

It's deep in the evening and the cold settles bone deep, if she had bones. Who is she kidding? She shuts off her human receptors. They're making her nuts with grief.

She's in a wide open plain, but the scenery may as well be a swallowing black. And in this darkness, she hears the rustle of someone approaching:

 _Enter PEARL._

 _ **PEARL**_

You're really here.

 _LAPIS remains unresponsive. PEARL sits next to where she lies, sideways, on the ground. The wind rustles the grass, and the night expands to a universe of two, whether LAPIS likes it or not._

 _PEARL touches LAPIS's hair, runs her fingers through it. Cut to an EXTREME CLOSE UP:_

 _LAPIS's finger twitches involuntarily._

 **PEARL**

The girl's got several shattered ribs, but she'll recover.

 _CUT to PEARL'S profile. In the dark, her pale form glows as she states the facts._

 **PEARL**

You're lucky. If you'd hit her any higher, you'd have shattered her ribs inward, puncturing her lungs.

 _CUT to LAPIS – her eyes dart from PEARL to no one in particular, then close. Slow PAN up to Pearl, who is now looking downward at LAPIS (off-screen.)_

 _PEARL continues her catalog of events._

 **PEARL**

Jenny called me up, told me what happened. Amethyst was passed out on the couch, the human girl had been taken to a hospital, the Cool Kids were forced to claim it was an armed robbery, and everyone's too scared and thankfully too small-minded to believe that aliens from outer space spent the evening doing something as asinine as spend time with hormonal teenagers.

 _(A pause.)_

Humans are like that. You could have a headless mass of limbs right in front of you and the doctor will still try to take your pulse and record electrical brain activity. They don't understand magic. In some ways, they don't want to understand. Until their children set them right, of course.

 _PEARL's gone off tangent._

 **PEARL**

Ahem. The girl only recently regained consciousness and… doesn't remember what happened the night before. The Cool Kids were detained for a while, but Mayor Dewey stepped in and everything is back to normal around the humans, minus some grounding for eternity.

 _LAPIS can somehow feel PEARL's gaze upon her._

 **PEARL**

Nobody else was hurt and I cleaned up the house and replaced all the light bulbs and the windows and the door. It wasn't a lot of work.

 _CUT to LAPIS's face, eyes opening._

 **LAPIS**

You know that's not true.

 _PEARL stops stroking her hair._

 **LAPIS**

You know all those kids will be scared shitless now and that the Cool Kids will get into trouble for this. And i've managed to wreck things between Amethyst and Vidalia. Sour Cream is her son, after all.

 **PEARL**

Do you… have anything to say in your defense?

 _At the end of the day, LAPIS knows that a drunk human hitting on her is no excuse for her use of powers. She has no equal on earth._

 **LAPIS**

Nothing.

 **PEARL**

Hm.

 **LAPIS**

Why'd you stop?

 **PEARL**

Stop what?

 **LAPIS**

Stroking my hair.

 _PEARL resumes._

 _LAPIS looks as though she is about to ask a question –_ why aren't you mad at me? _– but does not look a gift horse in the mouth._

 _Scene fades._

/

/

It is sunrise when Lapis finds herself conscious again, having dozed off sometime in the evening. Pearl's gone, but there's a lunch bag in her stead, with still-hot pancakes and a packet of maple syrup. Lapis picks up the tupperware, lifts the note taped to it.

 _I have a mission to attend to today. I've left a sleeping bag and pillows at the bush behind you. Make sure you get plenty of rest._

What Pearl really means is that Garnet is boiling over at the temple and that it's better to get that out of the way first before coming back and laying her neck on the chopping board.

Lapis doesn't feel like eating, but it seems wrong not to try. She finishes a bunny-shaped pancake before giving up and setting the rest aside. Behind the bush, just as the note says, is another bag, and within it, the sleeping stuff and the solar-powered TV Pearl gave her before. The noise from the local channels still can't drown out the weight of the night before. The hurt she feels from herself feels as damning as the hurt she carried during the war; she doesn't know why or how. The two are barely comparable in magnitude of destruction: this is just one trashed night.

It might have just been one trashed night but she managed to destroy all she had.

/

/

 _ **face the music**_

The warp pad erupts in a flash of light, signalling the return of the Crystal Gems. Lapis closes the television and turns to face them.

Amethyst is the first to react. "L-Lapis?"

Steven's about to run to her, but Garnet picks him up and tells him to go to Amethyst's room. Both of them. Now. Lapis can hear Amethyst running off with Steven, his objections heard all the way till the door shuts.

Lapis steps back as Garnet walks towards her.

"Garnet –" Pearl says, and even Lapis knows that whine in Pearl's voice will just make things worse.

"Leave us alone, Pearl."

Garnet grabs Lapis by the scruff of her neck; Lapis very nearly retaliates. She wills herself to stay calm despite her body vibrating in nervousness. If Garnet pushes, Lapis will fight back. Garnet drags her outside, releases her when they're some distance away from the beach house.

Garnet doesn't speak at once. She's angry (obviously) with her balled up fists and rigid bearing. Lapis has no problem matching that with her arms across her chest, her impatient stance, screaming teenage rebel.

"You know the punishment for harming humans."

Lapis, despite how bad she feels about everything, can't help but laugh. "I would have thought you'd bring backup if you're serious about bubbling me."

Garnet doesn't keep up her posturing. More calmly now, she asks "Is there anything you want to say in your defense?" just as Pearl asked before.

"Nothing."

"Absolutely nothing."

"Well, she hit on me. Wouldn't take no for an answer. It's obviously not a reason to smash her body with water."

"It isn't. Were you drunk?"

"I can't shapeshift a goddamn bloodstream. No."

Lapis readies herself. If Garnet tries to bubble her, they _will_ have a fight to rearrange the shoreline. There's no way she'll ever let herself be trapped, ever again.

"You're grounded," Garnet says instead. "And you're banned from the temple for a month – including Steven's room – so you'll have to stay in the Strawberry Battleground or the cove. Pick one. No outings to town with Amethyst and Steven. You're to apologize to the humans. You're forbidden to fly out anywhere and you're forbidden from using the warp pad. And no television."

Lapis waits for more.

There isn't anything forthcoming.

"You're kidding me. That's it?" From the way they'd spoken: _is there anything you want to say in your defense_? You'd have thought the choice was between bubbling or shattering. The incongruity of the situation isn't lost on Lapis: the Crystal Gems might huff and puff, but at the end of the day they're all long in the tooth, all bark and no bite. The act of kindness stings, for some reason. They're too weak, too soft, how'd they ever win a war?

"Where will you be staying? The cove or the battlefield?"

"Battlefield." she tells herself it's out of spite, taking over Pearl's little corner of the universe. The truth that lies underneath that emotion is something she doesn't want to admit to herself. She knows she's fooling nobody.

"What happened to Amethyst?" she asks, suddenly.

"Grounded, same as you. She can't leave the temple." What Garnet leaves unsaid is this: that they won't be seeing each other in a month. Lapis can read between the lines.

"How's Vidalia?"

"Mad."

It stabs at her that Amethyst is suffering for her mistake, something she's sure Garnet knows.

/

/

"Why aren't you angry," she asks, when she shows up at the strawberry field. She wasn't sure if she was expecting Pearl, but here Pearl is.

"I thought you'd choose this place," Pearl says, sitting on the mat she'd left earlier that day. She pats the space next to her, and Lapis sits meekly, something that surprises even herself. "I… guess it's just how Garnet and I 'roll.'" Out of the team mom's mouth, the word sounds like it needs air quotes. "As the humans call it, a good-cop, bad-cop sort of thing. I don't know. Garnet's anger makes me nervous for you. She's very strong."

"I don't know about that," Lapis says with a shrug. "I did beat all three of you with my gem cracked."

Pearl huffs. "It's just simple concern, alright?"

"For someone who doesn't like you?"

"For someone who's improving."

"Have you been taking lessons on empathy from Steven?"

"Perhaps."

"Water Witch thinks that's lame."

"Bird Nerd thinks that Water Witch feels bad."

Lapis almost says that she doesn't want Bird Nerd's sympathy, but the truth of Pearl's statement packs a walloping punch and drains the fight out of her.

"I really shouldn't be around humans."

Pearl looks at her, makes sure Lapis is looking back. "We felt the same when we first held Steven."

"He's not a human, though," Lapis retorts, remembering that it was his shield that beat her water clones. "Actual humans… are so damn fragile," she says. At the back of her mind, she remembers Steven's friend – "and you train one of them, don't you?"

"I do," Pearl says, without a hint of remorse. "It's their right to learn, if they want to."

"Huh," Lapis says, momentarily distracted from her own problems. "You're just sending them straight to an early shattering."

"You could argue that," Pearl says. "But is it worth it to live under the Diamond Authority? That's not your choice to make."

After a long pause, pregnant with trepidation, Lapis admits: "I just did what I was told."

"You didn't want to die."

"But I wasn't really alive, either."

Lapis breathes in. Lapis breathes out. Her head hurts, strangely full of guilt.

By the way, I have to get the television back," Pearl says, a bit sheepishly. "It's only for a month."

Lapis shrugs, handing it over. "I'm not a kid, though," she says. "I mean, it's no big deal, but… why?"

Pearl shoots her a long, measured look. "Believe it or not, being human, or I don't know, your own gem, isn't exactly like what they're showing you on television. For one thing, the lighting's never that good." Pearl shrugs. "I… understand, though. We were always putting on a performance for the courts, and it's just like television, someone's always watching us. But it's no guide to the real world, Lapis Lazuli. The TV can't give you a script for everything."

Lapis thinks to lob a barb back at Pearl, but what could she say? She grabs a fistful of grass instead to steady herself. It's gonna be a long month, and longer if she has to listen to Pearl lecture her to death about life, the universe, and everything.

If Lapis were honest with herself – she'd admit it's better than having to live with her actions all by herself.

/

/

/

/

 **AN:** Is it just me or did they just have a conversation that didn't end with either of them hurt / beaten?

Comments are always appreciated, thanks for coming on by! Stay tuned for more.


	4. Four

_"Haven't you heard of the music of the spheres?" asked the dragon. "It's the music that space makes to itself. All the spirits inside all the stars are singing. I'm a star spirit. I sing too. The music of the spheres is what makes space so peaceful."_

 _― Ted Hughes, The Iron Man_

/

/

/

REVOLUTIONS COME AND GO

/

She isn't sure what Garnet's plan is when it comes to grounding her for a month in the middle of nowhere. It might have escaped Garnet's notice that grounding as punishment works for children because they still have to go to school and still have something to do at the end of the day. On the other hand, Lapis has nothing to do but stare at the sky and replay the events of the past few days.

 _Apologize to Vidalia._ What was the old lady going to do, blow a shotgun shell into her? Like that would do any damage between her and a six-foot wall of ice or pressurized water.

 _You could have been bubbled._

She should be more thankful about the leniency, but it makes her angry to have to think of the fallout. Her every third thought, when not in anger over that stupid kid she almost killed, is about Amethyst – and this time she's angry enough to let loose a volley of water generated from her water wings. Halfway through the horizon, she loses interest in guiding it; the spray turns into a momentary splat in the distance that dissipates into droplets.

 _Stupid, stupid, stupid._

The warp pad behind her erupts. Before Pearl can take a step out, Lapis says, "Don't you have anything better to do than just play warden every night?"

But no – the footsteps don't sound like Pearl. Lapis turns.

"Garnet."

"Evening."

"So what's your Future Vision telling you? That I'm about to go on a rampage?"

"It doesn't take any Future Vision to read you, Lapis Lazuli."

"So what do you want?"

"Mostly to talk, now that we're not in danger of me conducting electricity with your water."

"That's considerate."

They look at each other for a moment before Garnet asks if she can sit.

Lapis raises an eyebrow and, bored by the past few days and tired of everything, allows Garnet to sit next to her, but not too close.

"Steven misses you," Garnet says.

"It's a bit early to use him to guilt me, isn't it?"

"I don't have to do that," Garnet replies.

"He's a real secret weapon," Lapis says. "His mom would have been proud. Make love, not war! Or so the humans say, even as they wage war all over."

"Do you really feel that way about Steven? That's it's all about letting him loose and converting the enemy?"

"From a tactical point of view, that's what he's for."

"Not everything in this world is calculated."

"Steven was calculated," Lapis says, and it's a bold assumption to make. It's a fair one, though. "He was a calculated risk that paid off."

"Let's say he was. Does that make his friendship to you any less real?"

"It just makes me wonder what plans his caretakers have for his friends."

"If we had plans for you you'd be with us now, not separated. We'd have kept a closer eye on whatever you were doing with Amethyst. We would have done a neater job of it. We gave up all that scheming a long time ago."

They're quiet for a beat, until Garnet speaks up again. "I think you're scared."

"Of what?"

"Scared to think that maybe we're not using you. It takes a bit of getting used to.

"At the end of the day, you're only here because you broke the rules against harming people, not because we're detaining you as a prisoner from Homeworld. If you wanted to live among the humans and forget your past entirely you could still disappear after."

That's the problem, though, isn't it? She can't live as a human, but can't return to court. Like Pearl said: she's not a human, and not a Homeworld Gem. Pearl didn't say Lapis Lazuli had to be a Crystal Gem.

The way the cards have fallen feels too… too perfect, to her. In a way. She met a boy on the boardwalk and ended up back here with the Crystal Gems after Homeworld. She's gone in a circle looking for somewhere to go, but it feels that, upon returning to the beach house there's this smug look on Garnet's face, knowing that at the end of the day, all roads lead back here. Is there ever really a choice? Did that infamous Quartz know, somehow, that this would happen far in her future, after her death? The best leaders practiced patterns. Rose Quartz would have known to study the patterns of revolutions.

But Lapis Lazuli was not a tactician at court.

"You could run away," Garnet says. "But I think you know how hollow freedom is when there's no one to share it with."

Checkmate. It falls into place, then, why Garnet is the leader of the gems and not Pearl, despite Pearl being Rose Quartz's right hand. Garnet knows how to make a point, and make it at the right time, damn her.

"What, are you going to send Pearl in now for some team mom crap?"

"She's working tonight," Garnet says. "Don't think I haven't seen how you treat her. You'd better learn soon, Lapis Lazuli, because the next time you hurt someone, you _will_ be in a bubble, regardless of whatever future potential you have."

Garnet leaves. Lapis Lazuli considers throwing a water cannon on the warp pad and destroying it, or maybe throwing a water cannon on herself and not having to think of anything.

/

/

/

A FUNCTION OF MORTALITY

/

Pearl takes her to the hospital the next day. Lapis isn't sure why.

The human hospital she's taken to reminds her of the new Homeworld. Everything in its place. Everything in order, on time. The newness and suddenness of it makes her withdrawn, the shadow to Pearl, who talks to the lady on the table called Reception, who gets the room number, who makes small talk with the nurse as they're led.

"So she's still out?"

"She prefers to doze on most days. But she's fine, very lucid when she's awake. On her way to a full recovery."

Pearl sounds as if she cares. Lapis should probably try harder to, but can't summon any fucks, as Amethyst would say.

The girl's asleep alright. Lapis turns away, impatient to get this over with. Pearl asks for a few minutes and the nurse makes some polite human ritual of allowing them their space. She leaves, finally granting them some privacy inside the room.

"So does it count as an apology if I say sorry while she's unconscious?"

Pearl picks up a chart and tries to figure it out. She reads out the human's name. Lapis forgets it as soon as the name has left Pearl's lips.

"She's collateral damage, same as you were. Just an accident. It didn't matter who did it, and it didn't matter to either side what became of you."

Lapis swallows the anger rising from her throat. "You can't force me to feel what I don't feel."

Pearl spares her a cool glance, which ignites another spark of anger in Lapis. She hates that it cuts, but she isn't going to lie about how she feels. What's one human's broken rib to her broken gem? And what's one accident that is so easily rectified to hers?

"It's not a fair comparison," she says. "And you know that. Human or not, it was partly her fault. And don't look at me like you have the right to judge _me_ for some lack of compassion. You can wipe that self-righteous look off your face."

Lapis shakes her head. There's a window of sky, her way out, if she wants to. She could just spread her wings and disappear.

"Being trapped in a mirror is no comparison. But the reason why you ended up that way isn't so different from why this human ended up here. Someone took a shot and someone else paid the bill."

"And I'm paying on my end. For both my past – that was out of my hands – and this. There's only so much lecturing I can take."

Pearl shrugs. "Maybe it was a mistake to take you here."

"You know, on most days I can actually take you and your whole crystal gem doctrine of loving-kindness. But this is too much."

It feels like Pearl's constantly stabbing at a wound. Lapis finds herself wanting to touch something, read anything, to distract herself from Pearl's prodding, her judging, her appraising. She doesn't like that look. She doesn't want to think about why it hurts, why she's annoyed, why, if she's honest with herself, she's so damn defensive.

"For what it's worth," Lapis mutters as the minutes grow long, "I didn't want to do it."

The moment the words leave her mouth she feels stupid and worse already. She did it, didn't she?

But Pearl only tilts her head, her eyes on the sleeping human. Nameless and faceless in that Lapis struggles to even remember the features of her face, the human is just one more drop in a bucket of memories Lapis doesn't care for.

"It's easier to break something than build it," Pearl says. "That's self-evident. But it still surprises me that there are times you can't even help fix what's broken. It seems so much easier to break, and to help to destroy. To make, and to help in building something, can be surprisingly tedious."

"Don't the humans say that time heals all things?"

"That's a function of their memory and the loss of stimuli. Some things don't heal." Pearl turns to her. "You're lucky people don't live forever."

Pearl opens the doorway out, and yet, as Lapis crosses the threshold, she feels as though the exit just leads back inside a maze she hasn't been able to escape.

/

/

/

REVOLVING DOORS

/

Lapis Lazuli asks if she can meet Vidalia the next day. Garnet (through Pearl) okays it – and unlike in Homeworld, where Pearl would have stayed the whole time, the Crystal Gems leave her alone.

It would be stupid to try to go to the beach house, but Lapis is tempted to talk to Amethyst anyway. But the low burning terror that Amethyst might not want to see her keeps her away, in the end.

Having nothing else to knock on, she knocks on the tarp.

Vidalia comes out with the shotgun. She takes a good long look at Lapis, eyebrows raised. Lapis won't admit it, but the gun (though ultimately harmless) puts her on edge. She has her water wings at the ready, in case anything happens.

"Sorry to disappoint, but shooting me doesn't do anything."

"It'll poof ya, at the very least."

So the old lady knew about that, huh. But before Lapis can raise a wall of ice, Vidalia brings her shotgun sights down and lays the gun to rest against the wall. "Who'm I kiddin, it ain't even loaded."

She pulls the tarp aside and walks inside. "Ya comin' in or not?"

/

/

There are no TV shows for this kind of awkwardness. "Almost got a heart attack that night," Vidalia murmurs. They sit across each other, cutting straight to the point without any small talk.

"Wasn't SC's fault."

"Girl, I've been around. I've seen a lot of stuff. Y'don't think I blame my own child, do you?"

Lapis thinks to her television shows. _But that's what other family units do._

"Nah, I think this is a case of a few things going from bad to worse," Vidalia says. "S'not like Amethyst and I never got into trouble," she says. "But I got angry, anyway. I might have tried shootin' you if you were around that night. Lucky for your wings, huh."

Lapis lets the low blow pass. "I'm sorry," she says, not sure if she's sincere, or what Vidalia will see in her apology.

"That's a load of crap comin' from you."

"Well what else am I supposed to do here?"

Vidalia blinks in amazement. "Does everyone have to spell everything out for you?"

"I'm not from this planet!"

"You're not that new to this. You can't keep pulling that card."

"Then what do you humans want?"

Vidalia runs a hand through her hair.

"Okay kiddo," (and even Lapis can tell she means that ironically), "come back when you feel like taking responsibility."

"I… am taking responsibility," Lapis says, but Vidalia throws her a look that says _go, already._

So Lapis goes.

She wonders, as she walks down the streets of Beach City, what she even came here for. It feels like she takes a step forward and several more back. It feels like maybe she should stay grounded at the Strawberry Battlefield forever. She swings back and forth competing, contradictory feelings, things that don't make sense, her own rationalizations. Her thoughts used to sink like a stone within herself, something she could rest against, but nothing's sure now, and she doesn't have anyone to talk to.

It takes her a long time, after she's arrived back at the Strawberry Battlefield, to realize that she may be too full of shame to talk to Steven. She tells herself she doesn't know why.

/

/

/

THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES

/

Pearl continues to come in and out of the Strawberry Battlefield. One night, close to the end of Lapis's grounded month, She asks, on Stevens's behalf, if he can hang out with her. Lapis goes still, as the air around them is. Pearl gets it.

"I'll tell him you need a little more time."

She manages to say it in that motherly tone. Lapis can no longer tell if it infuriates her or… or what? She doesn't have a name for how the opposite might feel.

Pearl sinks onto the bed of grass, watching the stars, hands behind her head. Around them, a lost firefly flits from here to there, trying to find wherever it is fireflies go.

Pearl might say that their forms, being projections of their gem, have none of the body heat humans possess, or that strange weight and smell all living things have. Pearl might say that, but Lapis doesn't believe her.

Something about Earth sticks to gems, unlike the sterility of her Homeworld past.

Something about Earth makes gems a little bit more Earthlike.

It brings to mind the sound of an alien making first contact in a television show. _Greetings, Earthlings!_ But the gems are more like those other aliens in the movies, the ones that come for their own gain. There were plenty of those shows too, with lots of lights and explosions. The reality of alien invasions is much stranger and much longer than what's in the movies. She doesn't think aliens trying to figure out human customs would be included in the final cut.

"How'd you not get sick of stargazing after a thousand years?"

"It's not the only thing we do when humans sleep, you know."

"Yeah, Steven-watching ought to go on that list."

That gets a smile out of Pearl. Considering the recent dearth of Things Lapis Does Right, she'll take it.

"Hey," Lapis says. "Can you come here for a second?"

She doesn't want Pearl to protest, so she doesn't tell Pearl what she's about to do. Before Pearl can do anything, Lapis forms her wings. She forms a support lattice from her wings to her forearms, sweeping Pearl up, solidifying the water into ice when as they fly up. That way, she won't get tired from carrying Pearl. After a yelp of surprise, Pearl clings close to Lapis, an arm wrapped around Lapis's side.

"Lapis," Pearl mutters, looking at the ground that's fast blurring beneath them.

"I'm only going up," Lapis says. "So we're technically still at the Strawberry Battlefield."

It doesn't take long for them to reach past the stratosphere. Up here, the stars shine with a brightness few humans get to see. A human would freeze up here, or die from the lack of air; Lapis isn't sure.

"You're not taking me all the way to Homeworld, I hope."

"Was that a joke, Pearl?"

"Ha, ha," Pearl says. "…Maybe half a joke."

"Yes Pearl, I am kidnapping you and taking us to Homeworld, where we'd be executed, one hundred percent."

"Well I was thinking you'd take me as some kind of plea bargain, actually."

"Your jokes are awful. Why don't you just appreciate the view, huh?"

Pearl looks to the stars. They're glittering – like they always do. They're there – like they always are. But Pearl sees more than she does, because she stares up at them, because she can hear their faint frequencies, like islands asking her to come visit them.

"Five thousand years ago there was a massive nebula over here," Pearl points, though it all looks the same to Lapis. "There we go… there are plenty of stars forming out over here."

Lapis can see better than a human (how else would she have found the way to Homeworld) and so looking at all the dust in space doesn't bother her, or obscure her vision. Beyond the clouds are a glittering river of stars, forming and whirling around, some masses unclear while others are already forming. The constant push and pull of gravity makes it hard for anyone to guess how it all ends.

"It's… pretty."

Pearl laughs and looks up at her. From this view, Lapis can see her gem shining against the darkness of space. "You sound so pained saying that. You don't have to force yourself to be interested, you know."

"Well I took you up here," Lapis says, "so I may as well try."

Try as she may, though, she really has no idea what Pearl sees in the stars. They all look the same to her, even if their colors might change. They're abstract patterns of light, against the black vastness of space.

Lapis has only looked at the stars to chart her course back home. She won't know what Pearl sees unless she asks. And so: "What's the big deal, anyway?"

Pearl doesn't answer right away. She's looking around, probably using the constellations to help guide her, until she finally stops at a spot, indistinguishable like all the rest. Then she watches for a moment before turning back to Lapis.

 _The stars shine bright tonight,_ Lapis thinks, looking at the light reflected off of Pearl's eyes.

"Stars change, you know? Without them, there wouldn't be any life on the other planets. I guess I -" Pearl stops. "I get that you don't see the constellations, Lapis. But I can still see the old trade routes from the different star systems. If you look carefully, you can see all the planets we went through, one colony after another. You can trace the whole history out from… well, we'd have to go farther away, but I can still see some planets from here. It's like looking into history. I wonder sometimes if anyone's ever bothered returning to our old colonies. I wonder if… anyone's out there, like us."

"You wanna go map the stars?"

"If I had nothing better to do, I might," Pearl says.

It all sounds very romantic, and Lapis is not a romantic gem. Pearl, on the other hand, probably eats this kind of thing for breakfast. Pearl might want to explore the stars, but Lapis only wanted to go home.

"You're gonna have to excuse my lack of imagination. All I did when I flew back to Homeworld was… stare at Homeworld."

Pearl chuckles. "Well, it was home."

Lapis, on the other hand, has just discovered something new about herself: that she likes it when Pearl chuckles.

"It was," she says, and the usual bitterness of her loss just isn't there.

They float around space, lazily, with no gravity to ground them, no anchor but each other.

"Humans are frequently foolish," Pearl mutters, after a period of silence. "But they get some things right."

"Like?"

"They somehow figured out that there was a kind of harmony to the universe," Pearl says. "They call it the music of the spheres. The frequencies we gems receive, they hear a limited range of it, and arrange it into music."

Lapis is dubious. "I get the music part. I don't get the spheres part. I've never heard about it on TV."

"I guess it's not popular in this century."

"So what about this music business?"

"I take comfort in the stars," Pearl admits. "They all belong somewhere. Space has a kind of sense to it, some kind of harmony, even if there's no reason why it should. Space isn't a deterministic, mechanical structure, but structure exists nonetheless. Even humans have some kind of internal mechanism that makes them aware of this formation, even if their ears can't hear it. You can't look at space and tell yourself you're alone."

The connection between is too abstract for someone like Lapis. "Sure," she says, filing it under _ask the internet later_.

"Lapis? Can we try… looking at the Earth?"

And as Pearl says it, Lapis finds that she herself wants to look at Earth, not from the viewport of the ship, but on her own. With a flap of her wings, she turns.

"The Earth's still alive… it's quite incredible, really. I'd like to think we had a hand in keeping it that way."

"It's just a hunk of rock," Lapis retorts. She knows better, but this is how bantering has turned out for her and Pearl.

"It's a hunk of rock that happens to house your favorite humans and gems."

They're too far away to watch the clouds move. From here everything is just one large clump, of either land or water. Somewhere down there, the Cool Kids are grounded. Somewhere down there, she'd almost killed a human. Her fingers, wrapped around Pearl's shoulders, twitch.

"Are you getting tired?"

"Obviously not, with the ice on my hands. I could have brought you out farther if we had started out higher."

"This is… close enough," Pearl says, looking at her.

Does she mean the distance between the stars, or the distance between the two of them?

She feels Pearl's grip on her torso tighten a little bit.

"You're really scared after all."

"Well, being in your arms, if you aren't here to kidnap me, you could shatter me if you dropped me."

"What a sad end to the legendary renegade Pearl. Even after seeing you before, I always have this image of you in my head where you're taller."

"Excuse me? I _am_ taller than you."

"They always brought up what a good quartz killer you were. I used to expect you'd be bigger than them. And then I saw Jasper take Garnet down and I thought – is that all?"

"I'm rusty," Pearl concedes.

While staring at the Earth, seemingly unchanging from this view, Pearl asks, "What did Garnet talk to you about?"

"A bunch of things I don't really understand."

"Do you want to go down yet?"

"You decide."

"I'm fine. Yes, let's go back to Earth."

The ice off her exoskeleton flakes off as they re-enter the Earth's atmosphere. Lapis can see Pearl watching the flakes turn finer and finer until there's nothing left, floating up as they sink back into Earth. Lapis's water wings retreat into her gem.

She looks at her hands, now bereft of Pearl. What is she supposed to do next?

"Thanks," Pearl says quietly, sitting on the ground.

"I thought you'd like it," Lapis Lazuli says.

"I'm not complaining about your… change of heart," Pearl says. "But why?"

"Because you're always stuck with me now that Amethyst can't babysit me?"

"I would think it's the other way around with you and Amethyst. Did Garnet have anything to do with this?"

"Don't think so. She just tried to scare me into behaving."

"She wouldn't do that."

"She did too," Lapis says. What Garnet sees, she's almost afraid to know.

"Whatever it was… thanks," Pearl says again, now lying down on the green grass, staring up at the full moon and the stars. "I did like it up there," she says.

"I'm happy for you." Lapis, having nothing better to do, follows suit. Lying next to Pearl, her neck tickled by the tips of grass, she isn't sure what comes next.

"I regret the day you were taught sarcasm."

"I had a sense of humor before I came to Earth, you know."

"Mimicking a fart is not a sense of humor."

"It's pretty good compared to everyone else at court!"

"Blue Diamond's court is an awfully low bar."

That gets a laugh out of Lapis. To her surprise, Pearl laughs along with her. Looking to the side, watching Pearl laugh, somehow she isn't even shocked that they've ended up like this.

It should feel like a violent jolt towards something she'd rather not be, but it doesn't feel that way. It feels like she's dropped something, somewhere along the way. _It could be your pride,_ her mind tells her, but she finds, looking at Pearl smiling at nothing in particular, that she doesn't really care.

 _I think you know how hollow freedom is when there's no one to share it with._

/

/

/

 **AN:**

Lapis takes forever to defrost.

Next update will be stalled because I'm going back and forth with this and another story, called Talk To Her (which is an M-rated Pearlmeth piece.)


	5. Five

/

/

/

I MEAN IT, I DO

Amethyst shows up one evening. It's a few days before the end of Lapis's grounding period, which means she snuck out. Maybe the gem monsters took a day off.

"Good thing you didn't waste away waiting for me," Amethyst jokes as she walks down the teleporter pad.

The usual thing to do would be to punch Amethyst's shoulder.

"Hey," Lapis says instead, not getting up from the rock she's leaning against.

Deflating slightly from Lapis's lack of a response, Amethyst sits down as well. "Miss me?"

Lapis leans to rest her head on Amethyst's shoulder. "I was stupid."

"Well uh, so was I."

"Sorry," Lapis says. It doesn't sound any different from the times she hasn't meant it, which makes her wonder if Amethyst can tell she's sincere.

"Hey man, I just got back here, don't kill the mood."

"Can't kill the mood if it was never there to begin with," Lapis retorts. That earns her a weak laugh from Amethyst, the sound of which she hoards in her mind.

"Yeah, you're just terrible," Amethyst says.

They sit there for a while, simply enjoying the fact that they can actually do that again. Lapis should try something, anything, but even on a good day no one's ever accused her of being cheerful.

"How was hanging out with Pearl?"

She could take a cheap potshot at Pearl's many motherly mannerisms, but finds that she can't. "It didn't suck," Lapis says.

"Yeah, she isn't so bad these days," Amethyst agrees, much to Lapis's surprise. "What do the two of you talk about, anyway?"

"Um," Lapis says, not wanting to talk too much about her little trip to space with Pearl, "Well, uh. It was typical Pearl stuff." (Technically, nothing Pearl talked about was Typical Pearl Stuff, not that Amethyst understands that.) "She pointed out all the constellations and stuff. And sometimes we talked about Earth. Geology. Changing seasons." Sometimes, talking with Pearl was like talking to an encyclopedia that talked back. It was, in a strange way, the opposite of when Pearl would ask the mirror for this image or that of Homeworld. The memory of it still hurt, but Pearl's quiet contriteness whenever Lapis wants to take cheap shots at her makes Lapis feel like she's the absolute worst afterwards.

She doesn't want to tell Amethyst that part. It's a feeling close to shame, which someone who has suffered as badly as Lapis shouldn't have to feel.

/

/

/

They go through the lighter things to talk about: the comings and goings in Beach City, missions, complaining about the tourists on the boardwalk – but they run dry pretty quick. Suddenly all these things Amethyst likes to show off about Earth have fallen into the background in Lapis's head.

"So is Vidalia pissed at you?"

"No," Amethyst says, turning away from Lapis, to the other side of the rock they use as a pillow. She says _no_ angrily, because Vidalia should be angry at her, but has probably already forgiven Amethyst before Amethyst can even forgive herself.

What do humans do when they feel… like this? Gems only seem capable of beating themselves up over things and trying not to think about it.

If she only knew her future, she'd have no regrets. Like Garnet. It's cheating to know the future. Unfair.

"She's still kinda pissed at you though, even though I told her not to be."

Does she deserve the anger or not? And if she doesn't feel guilty about it, why do Pearl's reassurances help with how she feels? She shouldn't have to feel bad, but she does, even if she tells herself it's also that stupid human girl's fault for laying an unwanted finger on her.

"I was thinking… we could go hang out with the Cool Kids sometime."

"Aren't they grounded to eternity?"

"They can hang out as long as there are 'trusted adults' around. Dewey's idea, not Vidalia's."

Seriously? Lapis has only seen that kind of punishment with younger humans. But that's on TV, what does she know? She does know Mayor Dewey; knowing him, 'trusted adults' probably mean those people in sunglasses.

"So Buck's stuck at his dad's house?"

"And his friends are stuck with him."

That doesn't happen on Homeworld. When you're punished, no one wants to hang out with you. You're at it alone, and everyone's breathing a sigh of relief that it isn't them in trouble.

Now that Lapis thinks about it, she's never been left alone since she got freed out of the mirror. Amethyst hadn't left her, Garnet hadn't left her, Pearl hadn't left her – and Steven hadn't left her. It's one of those sobering thoughts that she knows will eat at her. She wants to ask about that mid-season finale she was supposed to have watched with Steven, but she can't bring herself to speak.

/

/

/

Earth doesn't have a single, all-encompassing rule to deal with casualties of war. On the days that she can see beyond all the wrongs that have been done to her, she wonders how she's gone from being a victim to – to having so much power. After all, Homeworld's not made of water. She wasn't wrong when she wrecked that house party, but she managed to hurt people, and worse still is that hurt is hurt, regardless of intent.

/

/

/

During the daytime, Lapis sifts through the remnants of the gem war. She flies up to the handle of a fusion's axe, surveying her territory, thinking about the Jaspers that must have fused to be at this size, thinks about them being shattered into smithereens. Some days are spent picking strawberries, or nuts. She isn't bored; there's always company. Living things scurrying about, collecting shiny spearheads to impress their mates, making nests out of broken handles, that kind of thing. But Lapis only watches, she doesn't interfere. And somehow, she'd never take a single piece out of this tableau. Maybe the Crystal Gems are over it, maybe to them all this is is a junkyard they occasionally pilfer for old weapons. Maybe that's the right way of looking at this place. But Lapis sometimes imagines the battles going on and thinks to herself that the only creature with a claim to this carnage ought to be the Earth.

/

/

"You always show up at night," Lapis says, on another evening with Pearl.

"Do you prefer mornings?"

"No," Lapis says. She likes these evenings.

But is it the evening she likes, or the company?

"The month is almost up," Pearl says. "Steven's really missed you."

"I missed him too."

"By the way, you're getting your TV privileges back today." Light pours out of Pearl's gem, followed by Lapis's mini-TV.

"Thanks," Lapis says when Pearl hands it to her. "Truth is, I've been watching a 'show' all month, too."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Y'know. Like, uh, it's rabbit mating season, did you know?"

"Lapis," Pearl says. "The breeding season for rabbits is more than half the year."

"Oh. Well. I got to see some tadpoles come out of their eggs yesterday."

"I see," Pearl says.

She's got this faraway look in her eyes.

"Earth to Pearl?"

"Nothing, just… you sounded familiar."

"If you think I'm going to fall in love with this planet and go all Rose Quartz, you're sadly mistaken."

Pearl mutters something under her breath. Lapis catches it, but isn't sure.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Pearl!" Lapis glares at her. " _'I'm glad to hear that,'_ was it?"

Pearl shakes her head. Her words seem to have embarrassed her. She stands to leave, faster than it takes Lapis to understand that Pearl feels guilty about Steven for saying that.

"Oh no you don't," Lapis says irritably, fighting every instinct in her to just destroy the warp pad and worry about the consequences afterwards. "Look! I'm sorry, okay, sorry for bringing her up." Lapis flies faster than Pearl can walk. She makes it to the warp pad, preventing Pearl from leaving.

"I'm not mad at you," Pearl says irritably, staring at Lapis's feet.

"Yes you are," Lapis says.

"I'm not," Pearl says. "What have I got to be mad about, and what right would I have to be?"

"So are you mad at Steven?" The minute the words fly out of her mouth, she wishes she could take them back.

"Never."

"So you're mad at yourself," Lapis says, and somehow she comes off as smug despite how sorry she is to have brought this thing up.

"What a surprise," Pearl mutters darkly. "I'm mostly over it," she says. "But sometimes I'm not. Steven already feels awful enough as it is." She sighs. "Lapis, can I go?"

"No way, I'm not stepping out of here."

Pearl shrugs and, to Lapis's surprise, steps up to the warp pad. Light engulfs them as Pearl warps them away. Lapis's wings spring out just in time for her to fly away from the warp stream, leaving her annoyed at Pearl, but angry at herself.

 _Man,_ Amethyst would have said, _you just had to go all out, huh?_

/

/

/

On the day Steven warps Lapis to freedom, Lapis can barely summon a smile. She's spent the entire morning failing at being grateful; she doesn't have the energy for this. Steven seems to understand, though. They go no further than the boardwalk, and only because, out of all the answers Lapis could muster, when Steven asked her what she wanted, she said, "ice cream."

Lapis had ordered something she couldn't pronounce very well, simply because she hadn't tried it.

"So… is it any good?" Steven asks.

"It's sweet," she says. At least, it tastes like what she thinks _sweet_ means.

They try each other's ice creams out. Steven agrees that hers is very sweet. Despite her earlier exhaustion (over what, really?), Lapis finds herself waking up a little more along with the rest of the town.

"Feeling better?"

"Yeah," she says, wondering (as she always does), whether telepathy could be one of Steven's latent gem abilities. "Kind of like… I can hear people talking now," she says. And she notices the color of things now, too, and how Funland smells of food, and the sea breeze, and sweat.

"Thank you," she says.

"No prob, Bob," Steven says.

Lapis could talk about a lot of things that boil down to a mix of shame and anger and confusion, but the best thing about Steven is that he's there scraping his paper cup clean, reminding her that, here and now, the only thing to do is to enjoy the ice cream.

/

/

/

It takes several days of wandering for Lapis's resolve to crystallize itself. At the end of her long walk, she goes up to Steven's room and knocks on Pearl's door.

The door opens with the faintest admonition from Pearl: "Steven! I'll be done in a few…" Pearl pokes her head out the door.

"Not Steven," Lapis says.

"Can I help you?"

 _Frosty._ Lapis expects that. "Can I come in?" She doesn't know whether she ought to look contrite or determined.

Pearl wordlessly moves away from the door. Inside, Lapis can see a pocket dimension made of water, fountains of it cascading from a peak high above her, falling in curtains down to the bowels of the temple base. Pearl disappears into a curtain of water, only to reappear high above.

 _She expects you to fly yourself, obviously._ Lapis follows to the top.

With a wave of her hand, Pearl erects two seats and a single table. Lapis takes a seat; Pearl doesn't. "So?" Pearl asks.

 _Geez Pearl, sorry okay?_

 _Look, I'm sorry, quit stabbing me with your eyes._

"Sorry," Lapis says firmly.

"'Sorry'", Pearl echoes with faint raise of her eyebrows.

"Yeah," Lapis Lazuli says.

"I half expected you to tell me that I'm overreacting."

"I shouldn't have pushed," Lapis says, staring at the water cascading downwards.

"…Am I supposed to just tell you 'okay'?"

"You're gonna tell me to get out, I think," Lapis replies.

"I just let you in," Pearl says. "That would be silly."

For a second, Lapis considers that Pearl might want to trap her. The thought jolts her for a sudden, violent moment. She could summon her wings, but wills herself to sit down on the chair.

There's no one here who'd seal her away.

"When Steven was a baby," Pearl says, "We tried to kidnap him from Greg. We wanted to get Rose Quartz 'out' as though we could just undo what she wanted to happen." She turns away from the table. "I guess what I'm trying to say is, I don't have the right to get angry. And truthfully I don't want to be angry with you."

Pearl's answer extinguishes any desire to run on Lapis's end.

 _So are you angry or trying not to be angry or what?_

"How'd you make it up to Greg?"

It's an oblique way of asking _how do I fix this?_

Pearl chuckles. "It was a lot of singing and crying over a fourteen-year period."

"Is it going to take us that long?"

Pearl turns to her. "I hope not. But that's really up to whenever you decide to forgive… us. For the mirror."

"With how shitty I am, it won't take too long for my list of fuckups to cancel yours out."

"I doubt that."

Pearl doesn't sound like she's looking for Lapis to say something gracious like "of course not." She's not fishing for forgiveness. She's just saying it as it is.

"Anyway," Pearl says. "If that's all you came here for…don't worry about my feelings. I'm not in the right here either, is what I'm trying to say."

/

/

/

STALLED / MAYBE NEXT TIME

She's hit a wall. Hanging out with Amethyst and Steven feels mechanical, like she's trying the same motions of 'being a human' in the hopes that something will break through. She can tell they're frustrated with her, too. "What do you want to do today," can't always be answered with "anything you want," or "nothing." She doesn't want to go with them on missions and she hasn't shown her face to the Cool Kids.

On a whim, she returns to the hospital. She doesn't find her victim the first time she visits, or the second time.

On the third time, she finally finds the girl. Lapis spends the afternoon watching her try to walk. For someone as tall as a quartz, it's taking her a long time to recover. Lapis has to remind herself that humans aren't like gems: height has nothing to do with purpose or strength.

By the sixth visit, she knows the Girl's schedule well enough to show up at lunch time, after the girl's physical therapy. Lapis threads her way through the lunch crowd, ignoring the chatter of idle talk, the rap of plastic trays, the _slop_ of sauce on a plate every time someone moves up the cafeteria line. Arriving at the girl's lonesome table, she drags the empty chair across the girl and sits without any preamble. It's when Lapis sits down that she realizes that the girl towers over her.

The girl _could_ scream. Lapis is blue, after all. But Lapis also knows that humans go through great lengths to ignore the unusual. Instead, the human across Lapis starts fumbling around her pill box, muttering to herself about hallucinations.

"I'm not a hallucination," Lapis says, after the girl dry-swallows. Truthfully, it could be Lapis who's hallucinating. Tall as a Quartz, broad as a Quartz, Lapis has to tell herself that this girl is a human. The hair color isn't white. The human's hair is red, and Jasper's was never –

"I'm having a flashback," the girl tells herself.

"You're not," Lapis replies. She's taking the words right out of Lapis's mouth, it's unfair.

"You're fucking blue," the girl mutters to herself. "Why the fuck is my mind so fucked up?"

"Because you keep taking that stuff," Lapis says.

The girl ignores her. She starts shoveling food into her mouth. Lapis came here with the intent to apologize, but she would never, ever apologize to Jasper.

"Get over it," Lapis almost says. "It's your fault, you know," but the words don't leave her mind. It's a dumb, short-lived human being in front of her, who looks as though she'd pass out. Not Jasper, not Jasper, not Jasper.

"I'm sorry," Lapis says instead, thinking of Pearl.

The girl stands up and runs. One or two other humans take notice, but the sound of her fleeing footsteps is drowned out by everything else. Lapis walks away as well, slowly. They'll remember a large girl running away, not the one that walks like everyone else.

She blends into the background, thinking about the abruptness of a slammed door.

/

/

/

Destroying rocks doesn't do it, play-wrestling doesn't do it, long walks don't do it, and talking to Steven is far too shameful (he's a human child, a friend, not a gem-powered mirror that ought to listen to her every whine about Earth). Lapis has gone around in a circle and ends up back where she started: the strawberry battlefield. She settles at her usual spot, just a few yards away from the warp pad.

Pearl isn't magically there despite the stars out, which annoys Lapis so much she wants to destroy the floating islands just because.

"Pearl!" Lapis shouts. Why can't Garnet just know the future and tell Pearl to come over? Why can't somebody just _get_ it?

 _If you want to be understood, you have to say something. If you want help, you have to ask someone._

"PEARL!"

Maybe she should clap two hands. Out of boredom, she does just that.

The warp pad lights up with a crystal burst of sound. Who else should step out but the person who's been picking up after her.

"I thought you'd be here," Pearl says.

"I should clap more often," Lapis mutters to herself.

"Clap?"

"I believe in fairies," Lapis says.

"I'm sure you do." Lapis can't tell if Pearl gets it or not. Did she ever watch movies with baby Steven?

"I thought I was a free gem," Lapis says, because she can't stop shooting herself in the foot.

"You are," Pearl says. "Oh! Want me to… give you some space?"

 _She came here for you, idiot!_

 _Not to like, brood over Rose Quartz._

Thinking that stray thought makes her wince.

 _Don't waste it!_

"Stay," Lapis says, before Pearl mistakes her silence for a dismissal. "Please," she adds.

Pearl chuckles.

"If you're not mad at me, I mean," Lapis adds hastily.

Pearl folds her knees to sit next to Lapis. She sits up straight with a bearing that is neither overwhelming nor an attempt to make herself smaller. She _is._ That's all. It's a statement not just any gem can make. Smaller gems have always tried to make themselves smaller; larger gems always try to make themselves larger.

"It's difficult to stay angry at you," Pearl says. "I've been angry at a lot of things."

Before the pause can turn pregnant with awkwardness, Pearl adds, "I've brought cookies."

She puts a hand to her gem. Light pours out with the beginnings of a tray. She pulls the entire thing out and sets it on the grass between them.

"Well, they aren't fresh anymore."

The cookies taste good regardless. Chewy. The kind Amethyst and Steven like hot.

"How long were they in there?"

"About three days."

Lapis wonders if Pearl has been checking up on this place for that long.

"Woah, Pearl. Were you looking for me?"

"Truthfully, Steven and Amethyst were wondering where you disappeared to. You didn't even say good bye. They came here the other day looking for you."

"I… took a walk," Lapis says. "To clear my head and stuff."

Pearl hums. She lets Lapis eat the cookies in peace. She isn't fidgety, isn't waiting to disappear, isn't in a hurry to go anywhere.

Lapis envies her that.

"How do you do that?" Lapis murmurs. "How are you so content on this planet?"

"It took a long time to get used to the idea."

"It's always time," Lapis says, irritated. "'If you wait, things will get better.' But all I feel is stuck. Even when I walk for days, I only end up here again. Everyone else is either dead or gone or over the past and I know I shouldn't chase after it. But I don't know, it feels like – a door has closed, without me noticing. I want to open it again just to see everything I missed. Just to see if I could have changed things. You know I – I tried talking to that human."

"And how did that go?"

"Well I tried to say sorry, but I don't think she ever wants to see me again. And neither do I. It's not saying sorry _again_ I want to do, it's… going back there and not wasting my shot. But I don't even know what I could possibly say."

She's talking about too many things at once. She wants to somehow redo that unsatisfying talk she had with the human adolescent, but she also wants to go back to the past and rage at every gem responsible for her jailing. And she wants to shatter Jasper, sometimes, knowing she'll gain no joy out of it. Other times, she wants to just see Jasper's sorry state and maybe laugh or just stare. She doesn't know, truthfully, what she'd do if she ever saw Jasper.

And, truthfully, she wants to go back to the time where she felt confident enough to fly Pearl out of Earth.

"I know how that feels," Pearl says. She stares hard at the ground, fingers on her lips, in thought. "A friend returned to us," she says. "And for some reason she's now in a bubble at the temple. I ask myself 'why is she there?' all the time. And yet even if I ask that, I haven't freed her. I don't know how to make her understand," Pearl says, looking at Lapis. "It's funny how you can say sorry and beat yourself up asking yourself if the other person understood. Sometimes there's just no time, or they disappear, or you drift away."

"How do you live with it?"

"I don't live with it alone."

It's an answer Lapis can't say out loud with confidence. "Lucky you," Lapis mutters.

Pearl's long look at her makes her feel ungrateful.

"Geez, just say it."

Pearl's mouth opens and closes a few times before she finally speaks. "How does it feel to just wander around all the time?"

"Truthfully… a little empty."

"I think you should find a place to stay. It's just – I know you'd rather not stay in the temple. I'm trying to figure it out. The cove is no place to stay for a, a permanent residence. Or here, for that matter."

And at Lapis's expression, she adds, "I don't want to let this door close, alright?"

Lapis nods, a little chastised.

"I'll talk to Greg," Pearl decides.

"You don't _have_ to."

"I'm being a little selfish," Pearl says. "It's easier to know you'll be coming home to a definite place. And I honestly think it'll help, of course! At the very least, you'll have fresher cookies."

/

/

/

 _end chapter_

 _/_

 _/_

 _/_

AN:

Hi guys.

Yeah I know, it's been about a year since this story's last update. In the two years I've been picking away at this story on and off, nearly everything I wanted to resolve in fic has been resolved in the canon storyline. This chapter has been really difficult to write knowing that. Content-wise, the goal (for myself) of this chapter was to expose some flaws in the logic I applied when I wrote the story initially: a big part of Lapis Lazuli's untethered state of mind for the past 5 chapters in Just Breathe is because Peridot and the barn aren't there! It made me realize that in terms of solving story telling problems, the story beats of the canon storyline provide a far more 'neat' setup for Lapis to get better. (Well she has Pearl in this AU HAHA). It's always been off the table for Lapis to live with the CGs: she'd _never_. But Peridot had appeared in maybe 2-3 episodes by the time I was writing JB so I never expected her to settle on Earth first. I kind of enjoyed showing how difficult it is for Lapis to figure anything out without a home base. I'm not like, writing this to torture myself.

Canon Peridot and Just Breathe AU Lapis do share some interesting story beats though: they have an episode dealing with Human Culture (Camp Pining Hearts, television in general), and they are both friends with/'closer to' Amethyst (haha). It's been both funny and sad to see similarities and differences in canon/AU resolution handling.

Regarding the writing of this chapter, I feel that it is more jumpy than my usual. Lapis is 'stuck'. She goes through things again and again with some slight variation. It can be really unsatisfying. When I'm writing for Lapis, it is hard even for me to imagine a solution for her problem, because I'm writing in her shoes. Truthfully this is a function that Peridot in the canon storyline also resolves: you can't fix the kind of problem Lapis has by yourself.

At the end of the day JB is really a Lapis-centric story.

This chapter also has some unusually subtle bits in it (I don't write that way usually; I spell everything out.) It might seem that some lines are coming out of nowhere. I hope that they bridge together well enough. As for the subtle bits, you guys might have to reread some parts if this chapter doesn't bore you to tears.

TLDR: It's hard to write this story but thank you for your patience, insight into canon is fascinating, I had fun, this chapter is complicated and I hope I pulled it off well enough and I'll be back to fix stuff that's difficult to understand.

Thanks for sticking with this story.


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